"For some years I have strongly discountenanced the use of the words 'Ang-mo' or 'Red-haired,' for 'English,' except in those unavoidable cases when a 'freshly caught' Sin Kheh would be totally unable to understand any other term.
I have no doubt that on occasions when I have been present at meetings, special instructions have been given to the 'Generals,' to avoid the objectionable expression, and to use the words 'Eng-kok' or 'Tai-Eng-kok' for English or British, as also to give the proper titles to local Officials. It is however an unpleasant fact that the Chinese in designating foreign officials, use terms somewhat less complimentary than those to be found in the appendix to Mayers' 'Chinese Government'; Inspectors of Police for instance, are called 'big dogs,' and the Superintendent of that body has no higher title than that of 'Head of the big-dogs.' Inspectors of Nuisances are called 'Earth buffaloes,' and so on. At the meeting above described, it was most amusing to hear the 'Generals' correcting themselves when guilty of a lapsus linguae, or to see the austere visage of a 'Guardian' relax, as he called out to a 'General' fresh from the jungle, 'You fool! they will be angry if you say Ang mo; you must only say 'Eng-kok.' As for the candidates, the effort to comprehend such words, as the Chinese equivalents for 'British Government,' and 'Inspector General of Police,' was evidently too much for them, and seemed to be an even more severe ordeal than the drawn swords under which they had to pass."
-- Journal of the Straits Branch, Royal Asiatic Society 3: 1-18, 1878
02 December 2006
Eng-kok and Ang-mo
William Pickering, the first Protector of Chinese in Singapore, made the following note in his description of a Chinese secret society initiation ritual in the 1870s:
24 October 2006
Modern Day Tyranny
Tyranny was not always a bad thing, despite the modern-day connotations of the term. Even the most fearsome dinosaur commonly known to children has 'tyrant' in its name (Tyrannosaurus), but the first tyrants were merely political leaders in ancient Greek states who overthrew aristocratic governments with popular support and instituted reforms to revitalise the political and economic life of the states. Tyrants were usually aristocrats themselves, but they allied themselves with the middle and lower classes to overthrow the rule of the nobility, and so could be considered class traitors. The reason for discontent among the ruled classes was usually underrepresentation in government, since power was held by those who owned the most land and had the most wealth, poverty, and the rise of a new middle class which had aspirations to power and for reform. Hence the rule of a tyrant, called a tyranny, was probably tyrannical only to the hitherto rich aristocrats who had their lands seized, but much welcomed (at least initially) by the poor who had those lands parcelled out to them.
Some characteristics of the ancient Greek tyrannies are eerily reminiscent of the rule of populist leaders today, like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, such as (i) popularity and power base among the poor, (ii) seizing control during times of turmoil, (iii) seizing land from the rich to give to the poor, (iv) replacing a corrupt regime with promises of reform and patriotism, (v) implementing public projects ostensibly to benefit the poor. Scanning his profile on the BBC news website reveals most if not all of these traits and actions. It seems that such a leadership pattern or strategy has a long history of use; perhaps really is an effective means of achieving power.
For the ancient Greek states, tyranny was often beneficial. It replaced corrupt and deadened political oligarchies, where an elite class held most of the power, with a more democratic model and helped to restart economies through the promotion of trade and manufacturing. The latter was tied to the rise of the new middle class of tradesmen and artisans who did not fit into the traditional agrarian way of life. The wealth of this middle class was not tied to the land, and so they were not beholden to the great landowners who were the aristocrats. But because they had wealth but little political power, they were interested to see the overthrow of the aristocracy and the implementation of a new regime which would grant more influence to their class, and so through the tyrant, they achieved their aim.
However, tyranny can lead to ruin for a state, especially a modern one, in particular where populism is carried too far. In the case of Chavez's Venezuela, loyalty to the state is in some cases being subsumed by loyalty to the persona of the president. This is where the tyrant's authority overwhelms all others and is accepted unquestioningly. This can be a powerful tool in coordinating national action, yet it is a very dangerous situation where dissenting opinion is ignored or suppressed, because checks and balances against the abuse of power then fail. Chavez's dominance of the state media, his ubiquity, saturates those who cannot afford other means of finding out about the outside world, and hence moulds their world view to his. The citizen militias preparing earnestly for an 'assymmetric war' against the United States, whom Chavez views as an aggressor and threat, are almost entirely due to his influence, and some say paranoia. In the modern day, 'power to the people' promised by the tyrant is more likely an excuse for the empowerment of the tyrant himself. Furthermore, another tactic for galvanising support is to find a scapegoat for the country's ills, and even a strawman enemy will do. For Chavez, this is the United States, while for the Greeks, presumably it was other nation states who were in competition (economic, territorial, and military) with their own. Hence patriotism is another distinguishing trait of populism or tyranny.
So how can tyranny be avoided? The state of Athens provides a model, because it answered attempts to establish a tyranny through reform. These reforms were headed in 594 BC by Solon, a man empowered by the state and with a mandate from both the aristocrats and commoners, who averted the political collapse of Athens. He abolished debt slavery, then prevalent among the poor farmers. Economically, he revived Athenian fortunes by promoting the new industry of olive oil production. And in place of the traditional aristocracy, he substituted a timocracy, a system of government where power and representation was in direct proportion to wealth. In this way, the middle class was accomodated in the middle rungs of power (minor offices in the council), the wealthiest could hold on to the highest rungs (such as the positions of archons), and the poorest were admitted to the assembly from which they had hitherto been barred. Legally, he also instituted a more moderate code of law and a court of appeal. But if Solon's reforms are compared to those characteristics of tyrants listed above, we can see some parallels: land reform, economic revival, (somewhat more) power to the people. The difference, though, was that Solon instituted his changes with the initial approval of all social classes, he did not hold on to office after his period of service, he did not play one socioeconomic class against another in a bid to gain influence and power, and his implementation of timocracy carefully sloped reform such as to let the aristocrats retain much of what they had been used to.
Of course, Solon was not entirely successful. In 546 BC, an aristocrat named Peisistratus (or Pisistratus), in the typical fashion, seized power, drove out some nobles, confisticated their lands, cozyed up to the middle class, instituted public works, and patronised culture. But Athens was thrown into turmoil again upon his death and his sons did not last long when they attempted to succeed him as tyrant. Eventually, another lawgiver in the fashion of Solon, named Cleisthenes, set in place several reforms to placate the discontent. Among the most important of his reforms was the introduction of deme membership as the criterion of citizenship of Athens. Previously, citizens were registered under their clans, so foreigners who had been newly granted citizenship under Solon's or Peisistratus's reforms were unable to register because they had no cultural or religious ties to these clans. Demes, then, were geographic units of the state which were the new basis of citizenship, rather than clans. As a result, sociocultural factors no longer could exclude foreigners from full citizenship and participation and removed a major source of discontent. This must rank as an early example of an immigration policy.
We can learn several things from the Athenian story. First, that to pre-empt revolution, one must remake oneself. In Venezuela, despite a democratic tradition dating from 1958 (AD!), the two major political parties before Hugo Chavez were plagued by corruption and resource mismanagement. Therefore, his promises to bridge the rich-poor gap and to root out the rot were widely welcomed. Had there been sufficiently vigorous self-renewal in the old system, perhaps his message would not have been necessary. Second, economic growth and solving income inequity are necessary for staying popular, and even promising these things might be enough to gain popularity at first. The formula for populist support has stayed the same through the millenia: land reform, public works to benefit the populace and generate employment, and a hint of Robin Hood. Both Peisistratus and Hugo Chavez work(ed) from the same manual. Third, not all reforms work, nor do their consequences always show up immediately. The problem of foreign immigration was caused in part by Solon's liberalising of Athenian citizenship law, but only solved by Cleisthenes almost a century later. Solon's reforms were not all accepted by every quarter of Athenian society, and could not prevent the tyranny of Peisistratus.
Finally, a note in passing about another populist leader, though recently deposed, Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand. Thaksin's power base was primarily among the rural poor, who voted in droves for his Thai Rak Thai party. They also welcomed "cheap medical care and debt relief, his nationalist platform and his contempt for the 'Bangkok elite'." (BBC profile) Among the businessmen (the equivalent, if one recalls, of the Greek middle class of tradesmen and artisans) he was popular for his businesslike style and the rebirth of the Thai economy after the 1990s doldrums. But he forgot a crucial point, that as a populist leader he was a class traitor, and despite being the richest man in Thailand, he could not give the impression that he or his family was gaining undue benefit from his position as Prime MInister, as the sale of his family's Shin Corp shares seemed to many Thais. Therefore, the opposition, including his disdained traditional elite, could muster enough support from those who felt betrayed, to overthrow him in a coup. He betrayed his own class by gaining support from the poor by attacking the elite, but betrayed the poor in turn by his family's apparent profiteering and so made his position untenable.
Some characteristics of the ancient Greek tyrannies are eerily reminiscent of the rule of populist leaders today, like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, such as (i) popularity and power base among the poor, (ii) seizing control during times of turmoil, (iii) seizing land from the rich to give to the poor, (iv) replacing a corrupt regime with promises of reform and patriotism, (v) implementing public projects ostensibly to benefit the poor. Scanning his profile on the BBC news website reveals most if not all of these traits and actions. It seems that such a leadership pattern or strategy has a long history of use; perhaps really is an effective means of achieving power.
For the ancient Greek states, tyranny was often beneficial. It replaced corrupt and deadened political oligarchies, where an elite class held most of the power, with a more democratic model and helped to restart economies through the promotion of trade and manufacturing. The latter was tied to the rise of the new middle class of tradesmen and artisans who did not fit into the traditional agrarian way of life. The wealth of this middle class was not tied to the land, and so they were not beholden to the great landowners who were the aristocrats. But because they had wealth but little political power, they were interested to see the overthrow of the aristocracy and the implementation of a new regime which would grant more influence to their class, and so through the tyrant, they achieved their aim.
However, tyranny can lead to ruin for a state, especially a modern one, in particular where populism is carried too far. In the case of Chavez's Venezuela, loyalty to the state is in some cases being subsumed by loyalty to the persona of the president. This is where the tyrant's authority overwhelms all others and is accepted unquestioningly. This can be a powerful tool in coordinating national action, yet it is a very dangerous situation where dissenting opinion is ignored or suppressed, because checks and balances against the abuse of power then fail. Chavez's dominance of the state media, his ubiquity, saturates those who cannot afford other means of finding out about the outside world, and hence moulds their world view to his. The citizen militias preparing earnestly for an 'assymmetric war' against the United States, whom Chavez views as an aggressor and threat, are almost entirely due to his influence, and some say paranoia. In the modern day, 'power to the people' promised by the tyrant is more likely an excuse for the empowerment of the tyrant himself. Furthermore, another tactic for galvanising support is to find a scapegoat for the country's ills, and even a strawman enemy will do. For Chavez, this is the United States, while for the Greeks, presumably it was other nation states who were in competition (economic, territorial, and military) with their own. Hence patriotism is another distinguishing trait of populism or tyranny.
So how can tyranny be avoided? The state of Athens provides a model, because it answered attempts to establish a tyranny through reform. These reforms were headed in 594 BC by Solon, a man empowered by the state and with a mandate from both the aristocrats and commoners, who averted the political collapse of Athens. He abolished debt slavery, then prevalent among the poor farmers. Economically, he revived Athenian fortunes by promoting the new industry of olive oil production. And in place of the traditional aristocracy, he substituted a timocracy, a system of government where power and representation was in direct proportion to wealth. In this way, the middle class was accomodated in the middle rungs of power (minor offices in the council), the wealthiest could hold on to the highest rungs (such as the positions of archons), and the poorest were admitted to the assembly from which they had hitherto been barred. Legally, he also instituted a more moderate code of law and a court of appeal. But if Solon's reforms are compared to those characteristics of tyrants listed above, we can see some parallels: land reform, economic revival, (somewhat more) power to the people. The difference, though, was that Solon instituted his changes with the initial approval of all social classes, he did not hold on to office after his period of service, he did not play one socioeconomic class against another in a bid to gain influence and power, and his implementation of timocracy carefully sloped reform such as to let the aristocrats retain much of what they had been used to.
Of course, Solon was not entirely successful. In 546 BC, an aristocrat named Peisistratus (or Pisistratus), in the typical fashion, seized power, drove out some nobles, confisticated their lands, cozyed up to the middle class, instituted public works, and patronised culture. But Athens was thrown into turmoil again upon his death and his sons did not last long when they attempted to succeed him as tyrant. Eventually, another lawgiver in the fashion of Solon, named Cleisthenes, set in place several reforms to placate the discontent. Among the most important of his reforms was the introduction of deme membership as the criterion of citizenship of Athens. Previously, citizens were registered under their clans, so foreigners who had been newly granted citizenship under Solon's or Peisistratus's reforms were unable to register because they had no cultural or religious ties to these clans. Demes, then, were geographic units of the state which were the new basis of citizenship, rather than clans. As a result, sociocultural factors no longer could exclude foreigners from full citizenship and participation and removed a major source of discontent. This must rank as an early example of an immigration policy.
We can learn several things from the Athenian story. First, that to pre-empt revolution, one must remake oneself. In Venezuela, despite a democratic tradition dating from 1958 (AD!), the two major political parties before Hugo Chavez were plagued by corruption and resource mismanagement. Therefore, his promises to bridge the rich-poor gap and to root out the rot were widely welcomed. Had there been sufficiently vigorous self-renewal in the old system, perhaps his message would not have been necessary. Second, economic growth and solving income inequity are necessary for staying popular, and even promising these things might be enough to gain popularity at first. The formula for populist support has stayed the same through the millenia: land reform, public works to benefit the populace and generate employment, and a hint of Robin Hood. Both Peisistratus and Hugo Chavez work(ed) from the same manual. Third, not all reforms work, nor do their consequences always show up immediately. The problem of foreign immigration was caused in part by Solon's liberalising of Athenian citizenship law, but only solved by Cleisthenes almost a century later. Solon's reforms were not all accepted by every quarter of Athenian society, and could not prevent the tyranny of Peisistratus.
Finally, a note in passing about another populist leader, though recently deposed, Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand. Thaksin's power base was primarily among the rural poor, who voted in droves for his Thai Rak Thai party. They also welcomed "cheap medical care and debt relief, his nationalist platform and his contempt for the 'Bangkok elite'." (BBC profile) Among the businessmen (the equivalent, if one recalls, of the Greek middle class of tradesmen and artisans) he was popular for his businesslike style and the rebirth of the Thai economy after the 1990s doldrums. But he forgot a crucial point, that as a populist leader he was a class traitor, and despite being the richest man in Thailand, he could not give the impression that he or his family was gaining undue benefit from his position as Prime MInister, as the sale of his family's Shin Corp shares seemed to many Thais. Therefore, the opposition, including his disdained traditional elite, could muster enough support from those who felt betrayed, to overthrow him in a coup. He betrayed his own class by gaining support from the poor by attacking the elite, but betrayed the poor in turn by his family's apparent profiteering and so made his position untenable.
01 October 2006
Characteristics of Life
"Elementary textbooks of biology used to contain lists of the defining characteristics of life; the only one I recall is 'irritability', because of the picture it summoned up of an irritable oak tree."
-- J Maynard Smith / The Theory of Evolution xi
16 September 2006
Science Fiction and System-Building
The best science fiction authors were system-builders -- Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Gene Roddenberry -- they all build up worlds of their imagination, made up of fictitious but well-integrated elements that fit together to give a harmonious, plausible (in the context of the genre), and intellectually pleasing whole; a system, in any other nomenclature. And part of their success in capturing the imaginations and loyalties of their fans and reader-/viewer-ship lies in the flexibility of fictional systems to admit and accomodate additions of our own devising -- fan-fiction. We, the fans, co-opted the fantasy worlds of theirs for our own fantasies, our own bedtime reveries as we stared at dark, black ceilings and imagined that to be the view of dark, black, space from some porthole or beyond some forcefield.
That is the strength of good science fiction: its systems, self-coherent, well-integrated storylines and characters, yet accomodating of elaboration and fantasy. Yet the mind which is predisposed to concoct great mental universes is also ill-suited for predicting human nature and collective personality, i.e. societal and cultural trends. This is ironic because the people most familiar to us as futursts -- specialists in predicting the advances and technologies of the future -- are largely science fiction writers, whom we imagine to be well-suited to the task, though as I shall contend, they are in a subtle way not.
The trouble lies in the systems. A mind that favours systems as the means to achieve progress or to go about doing things would tend to overplay the importance of collective endeavour and underestimate the value of private enterprise. Simply put, he or she may not be able to find a place for mavericks in the system. One of the epics of science fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, shows the horror with which exceptions, singularities, are treated. All through the first part of the show we are treated to a sumptuous, 'futuristic' vision of how the well-oiled machinery of the future world works: seamelss air-space travel, excellent service in an orbital hotel, interference-free telephony, the closely-planned schedule aboard the Discovery. But when one rogue element with a personality of its own enters, it is the villain -- the computer HAL. Someone has said that HAL is the only 'human' character in the story, and even then, he is 'just' a machine. The individual is treated as a horror in the otherwise seamless and orderly world of the future that Clarke and Kubrick have dreamed for us.
Another instance concerns the Star Trek: Voyager series, wherein a Starfleet crew is stuck with a rebel crew (the Maquis) aboard the Voyager, in the opposite end of the galaxy, trying to return to the safety of Federation space. While the writers for the show have tried to layer and nuance the rebel characters and their motivations, rather than portray them as all-out bad guys forced to join hands with the good guys, you cannot deny that the Federation, as personified by its Starfleet crew, is seen as the model, the admirable prototype for the future: a uniformed, homogeneous service of talented individuals serving science, peace, and diplomacy. They have coolest gear and sleekest ships, while foreign ships and crews always look a bit messy, (even the straight-edged cyborgs, the Borg) or a bit disorganised (compare a Klingon ship interior to a Starfleet vessel). And it is tellingly convenient, too, how Starfleet subsumes the roles of a military, diplomatic service, scientific exploration service, and anthropological survey, all under the aegis of one organisation. Science fiction, it seems, is inordinately fond of comprehensive systems and organisations.
Enough digression. To be honest, what set me thinking about all these systems and organisations was a passage in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World where a character worries about a perfume tap at home left running. Perfume on tap? That must be the ultimate municipal supply system. The thing is, who would settle for perfume that came from a tap? We, as normal minded humans with average free will, would want something unique instead: perfume is something we wear to distinguish ourselves and match our personality, rather than just a functional means to mask bad body odour. This is why fashion is such a sprawling and all-consuming field, because it is a means to distinguish oneself from others in the most obvious way, through one's appearance. Any perfumer's would have a bewildering array of bottled perfumes. If you can find one who would mix xcents for you, then you'd have a potentially infinite number of possible combinations of scents -- it is entirely possible to concot one that is unique to you and you only. And that is it with humans: our irrepressible need for individuality and free will. To simplify things, this is why communism failed and will always fail, because you cannot make or treat everyone the same. Likewise, the world of the future will have too many choices to count, and not just one Starfleet or one kind of perfume on tap. We see it in our world already. For every kind of international issue there is a glut of NGOs and international bodies to tackle it. It seems a bit naive to think how Starfleet is simultaneously military and diplomatic. The same naivete is at work in those who see the UN as a sort of global police or international government. At best it is an international benevolent fund, but even in that capacity it is not always the best of solutions.
So what does this mean for the futurist? It means that the future will be far more chaotic and diverse than they could ever imagine it to be. Monopolies -- on technology, on perfume, on intergalactic travel -- may hold up for a while but do not last for very long once someone finds that alternatives are possible and economical. This is the message of the free-market economists: that planning an economy is a Sisyphian task beyond any man or politburo. One more example that comes to mind is the scientific database featured in the novel 2051, where any piece of the world's scientific literature can be searched and retrieved for a price. But this is not the case today: we have a rather more messy scene of publishers offering their own proprietary services, some free or per-payment public services, and so on. So futurists take note: global standards are rare exceptions, rather than the rule when technology and society develop. Even metric is ubiquitous, and it has had a long headstart and overwhelmingly good reasons for its universal adoption.
Thus galactic, or even merely global, standards, systems, and organisations will probably never see the light of day: the dreams of science fiction nonwithstanding. Science fiction lures its fans with the promises of well-ordered systems, but it is this same preponderance of system building in the psychology of the genre that is truly alien to the real human world. Heretically for a Trekker, I shall have to say that Star Wars, with its cultural and political chaos and sumptuous, Byzantine individualities, is likely closer to the future than Star Trek. Rationality is appealing, but we've learnt that human nature and thus human economics are something else entirely. Sorry, Spock.
That is the strength of good science fiction: its systems, self-coherent, well-integrated storylines and characters, yet accomodating of elaboration and fantasy. Yet the mind which is predisposed to concoct great mental universes is also ill-suited for predicting human nature and collective personality, i.e. societal and cultural trends. This is ironic because the people most familiar to us as futursts -- specialists in predicting the advances and technologies of the future -- are largely science fiction writers, whom we imagine to be well-suited to the task, though as I shall contend, they are in a subtle way not.
The trouble lies in the systems. A mind that favours systems as the means to achieve progress or to go about doing things would tend to overplay the importance of collective endeavour and underestimate the value of private enterprise. Simply put, he or she may not be able to find a place for mavericks in the system. One of the epics of science fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, shows the horror with which exceptions, singularities, are treated. All through the first part of the show we are treated to a sumptuous, 'futuristic' vision of how the well-oiled machinery of the future world works: seamelss air-space travel, excellent service in an orbital hotel, interference-free telephony, the closely-planned schedule aboard the Discovery. But when one rogue element with a personality of its own enters, it is the villain -- the computer HAL. Someone has said that HAL is the only 'human' character in the story, and even then, he is 'just' a machine. The individual is treated as a horror in the otherwise seamless and orderly world of the future that Clarke and Kubrick have dreamed for us.
Another instance concerns the Star Trek: Voyager series, wherein a Starfleet crew is stuck with a rebel crew (the Maquis) aboard the Voyager, in the opposite end of the galaxy, trying to return to the safety of Federation space. While the writers for the show have tried to layer and nuance the rebel characters and their motivations, rather than portray them as all-out bad guys forced to join hands with the good guys, you cannot deny that the Federation, as personified by its Starfleet crew, is seen as the model, the admirable prototype for the future: a uniformed, homogeneous service of talented individuals serving science, peace, and diplomacy. They have coolest gear and sleekest ships, while foreign ships and crews always look a bit messy, (even the straight-edged cyborgs, the Borg) or a bit disorganised (compare a Klingon ship interior to a Starfleet vessel). And it is tellingly convenient, too, how Starfleet subsumes the roles of a military, diplomatic service, scientific exploration service, and anthropological survey, all under the aegis of one organisation. Science fiction, it seems, is inordinately fond of comprehensive systems and organisations.
Enough digression. To be honest, what set me thinking about all these systems and organisations was a passage in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World where a character worries about a perfume tap at home left running. Perfume on tap? That must be the ultimate municipal supply system. The thing is, who would settle for perfume that came from a tap? We, as normal minded humans with average free will, would want something unique instead: perfume is something we wear to distinguish ourselves and match our personality, rather than just a functional means to mask bad body odour. This is why fashion is such a sprawling and all-consuming field, because it is a means to distinguish oneself from others in the most obvious way, through one's appearance. Any perfumer's would have a bewildering array of bottled perfumes. If you can find one who would mix xcents for you, then you'd have a potentially infinite number of possible combinations of scents -- it is entirely possible to concot one that is unique to you and you only. And that is it with humans: our irrepressible need for individuality and free will. To simplify things, this is why communism failed and will always fail, because you cannot make or treat everyone the same. Likewise, the world of the future will have too many choices to count, and not just one Starfleet or one kind of perfume on tap. We see it in our world already. For every kind of international issue there is a glut of NGOs and international bodies to tackle it. It seems a bit naive to think how Starfleet is simultaneously military and diplomatic. The same naivete is at work in those who see the UN as a sort of global police or international government. At best it is an international benevolent fund, but even in that capacity it is not always the best of solutions.
So what does this mean for the futurist? It means that the future will be far more chaotic and diverse than they could ever imagine it to be. Monopolies -- on technology, on perfume, on intergalactic travel -- may hold up for a while but do not last for very long once someone finds that alternatives are possible and economical. This is the message of the free-market economists: that planning an economy is a Sisyphian task beyond any man or politburo. One more example that comes to mind is the scientific database featured in the novel 2051, where any piece of the world's scientific literature can be searched and retrieved for a price. But this is not the case today: we have a rather more messy scene of publishers offering their own proprietary services, some free or per-payment public services, and so on. So futurists take note: global standards are rare exceptions, rather than the rule when technology and society develop. Even metric is ubiquitous, and it has had a long headstart and overwhelmingly good reasons for its universal adoption.
Thus galactic, or even merely global, standards, systems, and organisations will probably never see the light of day: the dreams of science fiction nonwithstanding. Science fiction lures its fans with the promises of well-ordered systems, but it is this same preponderance of system building in the psychology of the genre that is truly alien to the real human world. Heretically for a Trekker, I shall have to say that Star Wars, with its cultural and political chaos and sumptuous, Byzantine individualities, is likely closer to the future than Star Trek. Rationality is appealing, but we've learnt that human nature and thus human economics are something else entirely. Sorry, Spock.
12 September 2006
Wordcount
Since the first love letter was posted, countless romances have been conducted through written correspondence. Indeed, every medium of communication has probably been used at some point by lovers to speak through a distance to each other, but love letters hold a special place in the practice of romance. The lovely thing about writing to a lover is that a love letter can be carried about on the person, to be read and re-read when one needs some form of affirmation or reminder. So it is not a surprise that among the personal effects of many soldiers carried out into the frontlines are letters from family and lovers back home, and that much writing goes on while they're dug in, waiting in the trenches for action.
Email and online messaging through the Internet have expectedly also been co-opted by pining people around the world to stay in touch with their loved ones with even more immediacy than before, though personally I feel that something might be lost in such instantaneous communication. Both the amorous arts of conversation and of letter-writing suffer: being able to converse at any hour at seemingly any distance makes us treasure the moments of actual conversation less, while the 'live' nature of a chat is antipathic to the considered reflection and extended modulation of a letter.
But online romance does suggest a radical and interesting experiment that could shed some light on philosophical musings about what love is all about and how love develops between two people. A growing number of people have met online and had their relationships mature into something akin to our offline notion of romantic love (and for all intents and purposes is the same thing save for being carried out online). Once in a while the newspapers do report on couples living in different continents who met online and finally agreed to meet in person and marry. While these dramatic stories play on our sense of disjunction between the close online intimacy and the long physical separation, cases where the two people aren't complete strangers in the offline world (friends of friends and so on) and who live in the same region must be more common and an increasing means of partnership.
The important thing for this proposed study is that these relationships begin online and continue online until the point where the two parties think it is something like love. Why is this important? Consider that most instant-messaging programs enable chat loggnig, so all that has been said will be recorded down as a computer file, and that emails can be saved virtually forever. Therefore, every single word that has gone on between this online couple from the time they met has been recorded! And assuming that they only communicated online and not talked on the phone or met in person, which is quite likely if they live far apart and telephony or travel are prohibitively expensive, then we have a record of the entire extent of communication between the couple! So, simply put, we can count the exact number of words that are needed to pass between two people for them to fall in love. Not only that, we can go over every single conversation and track the alternating periods of drifting apart and drawing closer that oscillate in every relationship and watch how the incidences of drawing closer become increasingly preponderant. We can replay the instances where misunderstandings were cleared up and one party gains insight into the other's mind and soul. We can learn if the circumstances of the very first conversation and how it turned out have any bearing on the final outcome ("if you thought he was a jerk the first time you chatted, why did you still continue to say hello when he came online?").
So there you have it: an exciting new experiment in human psychology with important consequences for how we view and depict love in our assumptions and in our communications. Interested volunteers can send me their word counts at the usual address.
Email and online messaging through the Internet have expectedly also been co-opted by pining people around the world to stay in touch with their loved ones with even more immediacy than before, though personally I feel that something might be lost in such instantaneous communication. Both the amorous arts of conversation and of letter-writing suffer: being able to converse at any hour at seemingly any distance makes us treasure the moments of actual conversation less, while the 'live' nature of a chat is antipathic to the considered reflection and extended modulation of a letter.
But online romance does suggest a radical and interesting experiment that could shed some light on philosophical musings about what love is all about and how love develops between two people. A growing number of people have met online and had their relationships mature into something akin to our offline notion of romantic love (and for all intents and purposes is the same thing save for being carried out online). Once in a while the newspapers do report on couples living in different continents who met online and finally agreed to meet in person and marry. While these dramatic stories play on our sense of disjunction between the close online intimacy and the long physical separation, cases where the two people aren't complete strangers in the offline world (friends of friends and so on) and who live in the same region must be more common and an increasing means of partnership.
The important thing for this proposed study is that these relationships begin online and continue online until the point where the two parties think it is something like love. Why is this important? Consider that most instant-messaging programs enable chat loggnig, so all that has been said will be recorded down as a computer file, and that emails can be saved virtually forever. Therefore, every single word that has gone on between this online couple from the time they met has been recorded! And assuming that they only communicated online and not talked on the phone or met in person, which is quite likely if they live far apart and telephony or travel are prohibitively expensive, then we have a record of the entire extent of communication between the couple! So, simply put, we can count the exact number of words that are needed to pass between two people for them to fall in love. Not only that, we can go over every single conversation and track the alternating periods of drifting apart and drawing closer that oscillate in every relationship and watch how the incidences of drawing closer become increasingly preponderant. We can replay the instances where misunderstandings were cleared up and one party gains insight into the other's mind and soul. We can learn if the circumstances of the very first conversation and how it turned out have any bearing on the final outcome ("if you thought he was a jerk the first time you chatted, why did you still continue to say hello when he came online?").
So there you have it: an exciting new experiment in human psychology with important consequences for how we view and depict love in our assumptions and in our communications. Interested volunteers can send me their word counts at the usual address.
20 August 2006
University Rankings
University rankings have been in the news lately, with Newsweek's ranking of the top fifty 'most global' universities being featured in the local news, because NUS was ranked 31st in that survey, above some better known foreign schools like the Ecole Polytechnique and the Australian National University. But are such rankings of colleges and universities really reliable? A closer look at the criteria used by Newsweek to produce its ranking reveals more.
The magazine's survey was computed from three sources: a survey conducted by Shanghai Jiaotong University, the Times Higher Education Survey, and the size of the universities' library holdings, 'as a measure of scholarly resources'. The Shanghai Jiaotong survey, in turn, is based on these criteria: the number of highly cited researchers in the natural, applied, and social sciences, number of articles published in Nature and Science in the past five years, and the number of articles in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities Indices. The Times survey considers the following: percentage of international faculty, of international students, citations per faculty member, and the faculty/student ratio.
Looking through these criteria, one fact jumps out at you: these are mostly to do with publications and prestige of research faculty. Only the faculty/student ratio of the Times survey touches on anything remotely to do with instructional quality, while percentage of international faculty and students may tell you how 'global' (as the buzzword goes) an institution is, but little about how good its teaching is. My worry is that many college-bound students and their parents will take these ratings as a measure of how well a university will instruct and prepare its students in their chosen fields. Unfortunately, this survey will be of little help in choosing which university to attend.
To call it a survey of higher education institutions is surely a misnomer. This survey is mainly about the academic bugbear of 'publish or perish', the doctrine by which publication volume is equated with performance, while teaching and mentorship, which are the foundations of academia and sound scholarship (we hear so little of this word in its traditional sense), take the back seat. A recent article in Science reported on the reactions of the Chinese scientific community to recent scandals involving the faking of data by high-profile scientists. Scientists are undoubtedly human, and subject to the same weaknesses for power, influence, and publicity. Unfortunately, these compromise the quality of science being produced, and thus hurt the scientific community. The article described how many Chinese universities have made it compulsory for postgraduate students to publish at least one (for the MA degree) or two (for the PhD) papers in internationally indexed journals before their degrees may be awarded to them. Promotion and pay rises are also linked to publication in international journals, leading to what is euphemised as 'courtesy authorship' and 'institutional authorship' for major papers being published in leading journals.
Another victim of this unhealthy culture is what an article in the Savage Minds blog calls the 'academic gift culture':
Universities (or their publicity departments) often dismiss these rankings as unimportant or irrelevant, especially when they do not come out on top of their rivals, yet behind the scenes, their incentive and reward system for faculty is based upon the very same factors used to construct them, showing that they really do care. Academics have their own three-fold way of research, teaching, and administration. Naturally, if the system awards tangible research results (in the form of papers) and administration (in terms of committee chairmanship and the like), teaching will be neglected because it is the most nebulous and hardest to assess with hard numbers. Student surveys on teaching quality are notoriously unreliable, because students will tend to rate 'easy' teachers who award marks liberally very highly, while 'tougher' teachers who may be more stringent with quality will come out poorly. Furthermore, when 'star faculty' are hired on the basis of their research reputation, they are usually given very little teaching load, if any, and so it is unwise to select a college because a famous academic is there: he or she will probably teach few classes, and those that are taught will probably be oversubscribed. The Ivy League and other private universities which charge exorbitant tuition fees have frequently come under fire for leaving most teaching work to graduate students who work part time as teaching assistants, or to part-time adjunct faculty, who frequently shuttle between several schools to augment their income. The name beside a course on a course catalogue may only come to deliver a lecture to an overflowing lecture hall, then leave tutorials and discussion sessions (where the bulk of learning is done) to TAs and adjuncts.
So should we get too excited about NUS coming up among the leading 'global universities'? Well, both yes and no. Yes, because it shows that the university at least has a reputation and this can of course benefit our local students in terms of foreign student exchanges, overseas work opportunities, and the in-flow of overseas students and researchers who can enrich the local academic community. What's not hot is if the NUS administration lets this go to their heads and plays the 'ranking game' -- coming up with policies and incentive systems that serve only to drive up the university in the ranking tables but which do little to nothing for students. We must remember that education is the foundational objective of any university: since Singapore has only three universities, and NUS is the only comprehensive one among them, we cannot afford to turn out dullards. Having research and development is well and good, but not if the educated population has not been well-educated enough to appreciate its significance, or to perform competently in their professions, or to understand the issues of the day. The open book in NUS's coat of arms makes it clear: it is an institution of higher learning.
The magazine's survey was computed from three sources: a survey conducted by Shanghai Jiaotong University, the Times Higher Education Survey, and the size of the universities' library holdings, 'as a measure of scholarly resources'. The Shanghai Jiaotong survey, in turn, is based on these criteria: the number of highly cited researchers in the natural, applied, and social sciences, number of articles published in Nature and Science in the past five years, and the number of articles in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities Indices. The Times survey considers the following: percentage of international faculty, of international students, citations per faculty member, and the faculty/student ratio.
Looking through these criteria, one fact jumps out at you: these are mostly to do with publications and prestige of research faculty. Only the faculty/student ratio of the Times survey touches on anything remotely to do with instructional quality, while percentage of international faculty and students may tell you how 'global' (as the buzzword goes) an institution is, but little about how good its teaching is. My worry is that many college-bound students and their parents will take these ratings as a measure of how well a university will instruct and prepare its students in their chosen fields. Unfortunately, this survey will be of little help in choosing which university to attend.
To call it a survey of higher education institutions is surely a misnomer. This survey is mainly about the academic bugbear of 'publish or perish', the doctrine by which publication volume is equated with performance, while teaching and mentorship, which are the foundations of academia and sound scholarship (we hear so little of this word in its traditional sense), take the back seat. A recent article in Science reported on the reactions of the Chinese scientific community to recent scandals involving the faking of data by high-profile scientists. Scientists are undoubtedly human, and subject to the same weaknesses for power, influence, and publicity. Unfortunately, these compromise the quality of science being produced, and thus hurt the scientific community. The article described how many Chinese universities have made it compulsory for postgraduate students to publish at least one (for the MA degree) or two (for the PhD) papers in internationally indexed journals before their degrees may be awarded to them. Promotion and pay rises are also linked to publication in international journals, leading to what is euphemised as 'courtesy authorship' and 'institutional authorship' for major papers being published in leading journals.
Another victim of this unhealthy culture is what an article in the Savage Minds blog calls the 'academic gift culture':
The good academic supervises, teaches and encourages students without hesitation, and does her best even when she is asked to teach courses she is tired of or uninterested in. She organises workshops and conferences, reads and comments upon draft manuscripts by collegues, and she responds to emails even from students towards whom she has no formal obligations. She accepts to sit on committees and to take part in exhausting evaluations, and she referees manuscripts for journals and publishers. Sometimes she has to get up at four thirty to catch the seven o’clock flight to Bergen or Stockholm, in order to give a guest lecture or examine a dissertation. She often goes to research seminars, and she accepts time-consuming administrative tasks at her own department.
Much of this work is anonymous, and it is either unpaid or remunerated with a symbolic fee.
Universities (or their publicity departments) often dismiss these rankings as unimportant or irrelevant, especially when they do not come out on top of their rivals, yet behind the scenes, their incentive and reward system for faculty is based upon the very same factors used to construct them, showing that they really do care. Academics have their own three-fold way of research, teaching, and administration. Naturally, if the system awards tangible research results (in the form of papers) and administration (in terms of committee chairmanship and the like), teaching will be neglected because it is the most nebulous and hardest to assess with hard numbers. Student surveys on teaching quality are notoriously unreliable, because students will tend to rate 'easy' teachers who award marks liberally very highly, while 'tougher' teachers who may be more stringent with quality will come out poorly. Furthermore, when 'star faculty' are hired on the basis of their research reputation, they are usually given very little teaching load, if any, and so it is unwise to select a college because a famous academic is there: he or she will probably teach few classes, and those that are taught will probably be oversubscribed. The Ivy League and other private universities which charge exorbitant tuition fees have frequently come under fire for leaving most teaching work to graduate students who work part time as teaching assistants, or to part-time adjunct faculty, who frequently shuttle between several schools to augment their income. The name beside a course on a course catalogue may only come to deliver a lecture to an overflowing lecture hall, then leave tutorials and discussion sessions (where the bulk of learning is done) to TAs and adjuncts.
So should we get too excited about NUS coming up among the leading 'global universities'? Well, both yes and no. Yes, because it shows that the university at least has a reputation and this can of course benefit our local students in terms of foreign student exchanges, overseas work opportunities, and the in-flow of overseas students and researchers who can enrich the local academic community. What's not hot is if the NUS administration lets this go to their heads and plays the 'ranking game' -- coming up with policies and incentive systems that serve only to drive up the university in the ranking tables but which do little to nothing for students. We must remember that education is the foundational objective of any university: since Singapore has only three universities, and NUS is the only comprehensive one among them, we cannot afford to turn out dullards. Having research and development is well and good, but not if the educated population has not been well-educated enough to appreciate its significance, or to perform competently in their professions, or to understand the issues of the day. The open book in NUS's coat of arms makes it clear: it is an institution of higher learning.
11 August 2006
The Path of Duty
"...there will come occasions... when the path of duty will not be perfectly clear... and you will be apt to exclaim, as I myself have done, Would that there were a Urim and Thummim or an Ephod now, as in the days of David, that I might enquire of the Lord in plain words 'Shall I go up or shall I not go up?' and 'Wilt thou deliver them into my hands?' and receive a distinct categoric 'Thou shalt go up,'... to save you from the responsibility of a personal decision. And you will find... that tho' there will be occasions on which you will be shut up as it were to one course, when you will feel, 'I have no choice -- circumstances compel me to do this or that,' it will not always be so. Pray for help to decide, and then decide, on your own judgement, and with an eye to God's glory, and you will find that God's spirit has been just as really present... altho' you have not been able to distinguish his promptings and guidings from your own thoughts... reason and judgement. And looking back in after times, you will say, 'If ever I was divinely guided, surely it was then."
-- James Murray, quoted in E. Murray, Caught in a Web of Words.
29 July 2006
Kraken
The Kraken
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millenial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Because of its reputed large size and tendency to turn the sea murky with ink (according to the 18th century Natural History of Norway), the Kraken was believed to be a kind of giant octopus. We know now that the giant squid Architeuthis could be responsible for sightings of giant tetacular beasts in the open sea. Seafarers are notorious for their poor eyesight and wild imagination: the mermaid legends are believed to have originated from sightings of sea cows or manatees -- stout, unattractive beasts as their names suggest, far from the beautiful sylphs of nautical legend. The Latin name of the group, Sirenia, also commemorates the Sirens of Odysseus's journey, whose beguiling song he protected his crewmen from by plugging their ears with wax.
As for the giant squid, their washed up remains on Scandinavian shores sans tentacles probably were responsible for cryptic pictures in old natural history books showing giant bishops' hats found on beaches. If you look at a squid's body without tentacles and turn it the right way around, it's not too difficult to see how it might be described in that way, given a length of time and embellishment of detail after a sighting. Stranded giant squid bodies are not uncommon. Bodies up to 16 m long have been recorded, and even greater records claimed, though as Clyde Roper of the Smithsonian Institution put it, molluscan flesh and tentacles being as rubbery as they are, it's possible that some of these records were stretched into the record books. He also described the dissection of a beached whale -- a big messy job -- and the finding of many squid beaks in the gut of the whale: squids appear to be a major component of whale diets. It is not impossible, therefore, that whales should also prey upon giant squid, and whale bodies have been found with giant sucker marks on their skin, demonstrating that in the deep dark ocean depths, mammal and mollusc do battle in the struggle for survival. It is also interesting because sperm whales from time to time cough up congealed, waxy masses from their gut, which float to the surface of the sea and are gradually cured by the combined action of seawater and sunlight, being eventually found by humans on coastlines as the prized perfume ambergris, quite literally worth its weight in gold because of its rarity. It is believed that at least some of this material has an origin in the undigested or partly digested food of the whale, that is, some of it might derive from squid, even giant squid.
Real life is so much stranger than fiction. Giant octopuses terrorising ships seems rather predictable and passe (how many B films by now have shown giant creatures terrorising poor defenceless humans out at sea?) compared to the fact that one of our most expensive and prized perfumes is actually whale vomit, possibly formed partly from the remains of giant squid. Beat that, Davy Jones!
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millenial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Because of its reputed large size and tendency to turn the sea murky with ink (according to the 18th century Natural History of Norway), the Kraken was believed to be a kind of giant octopus. We know now that the giant squid Architeuthis could be responsible for sightings of giant tetacular beasts in the open sea. Seafarers are notorious for their poor eyesight and wild imagination: the mermaid legends are believed to have originated from sightings of sea cows or manatees -- stout, unattractive beasts as their names suggest, far from the beautiful sylphs of nautical legend. The Latin name of the group, Sirenia, also commemorates the Sirens of Odysseus's journey, whose beguiling song he protected his crewmen from by plugging their ears with wax.
As for the giant squid, their washed up remains on Scandinavian shores sans tentacles probably were responsible for cryptic pictures in old natural history books showing giant bishops' hats found on beaches. If you look at a squid's body without tentacles and turn it the right way around, it's not too difficult to see how it might be described in that way, given a length of time and embellishment of detail after a sighting. Stranded giant squid bodies are not uncommon. Bodies up to 16 m long have been recorded, and even greater records claimed, though as Clyde Roper of the Smithsonian Institution put it, molluscan flesh and tentacles being as rubbery as they are, it's possible that some of these records were stretched into the record books. He also described the dissection of a beached whale -- a big messy job -- and the finding of many squid beaks in the gut of the whale: squids appear to be a major component of whale diets. It is not impossible, therefore, that whales should also prey upon giant squid, and whale bodies have been found with giant sucker marks on their skin, demonstrating that in the deep dark ocean depths, mammal and mollusc do battle in the struggle for survival. It is also interesting because sperm whales from time to time cough up congealed, waxy masses from their gut, which float to the surface of the sea and are gradually cured by the combined action of seawater and sunlight, being eventually found by humans on coastlines as the prized perfume ambergris, quite literally worth its weight in gold because of its rarity. It is believed that at least some of this material has an origin in the undigested or partly digested food of the whale, that is, some of it might derive from squid, even giant squid.
Real life is so much stranger than fiction. Giant octopuses terrorising ships seems rather predictable and passe (how many B films by now have shown giant creatures terrorising poor defenceless humans out at sea?) compared to the fact that one of our most expensive and prized perfumes is actually whale vomit, possibly formed partly from the remains of giant squid. Beat that, Davy Jones!
27 July 2006
Advertisement
Singapore Theatre Festival '06 Event:
12 August
LIFE: New Country, Old Constraints?
ART: The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ
Could the Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ in fact become a reality in today's Singapore? How do we view the Opposition, or alternative views? How do we value or acknowledge them? Can we?
Moderator: Alfian Sa'at
Points of View: Sylvia Lim (Worker's Party Chairman, NCMP), Gayle Goh (Citizen Commentator), Eleanor Wong (Playwright, Lawyer), Tan Tarn How (Playwright, Social Commentator)
Time: 5.30 pm
Venue: Function Rooms at the Drama Centre @ National Library
Free Admission
The play "The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ" by Eleanor Wong also plays at the Drama Centre Theatre at 3pm and 8pm on the same day.
12 August
LIFE: New Country, Old Constraints?
ART: The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ
Could the Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ in fact become a reality in today's Singapore? How do we view the Opposition, or alternative views? How do we value or acknowledge them? Can we?
Moderator: Alfian Sa'at
Points of View: Sylvia Lim (Worker's Party Chairman, NCMP), Gayle Goh (Citizen Commentator), Eleanor Wong (Playwright, Lawyer), Tan Tarn How (Playwright, Social Commentator)
Time: 5.30 pm
Venue: Function Rooms at the Drama Centre @ National Library
Free Admission
The play "The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ" by Eleanor Wong also plays at the Drama Centre Theatre at 3pm and 8pm on the same day.
23 July 2006
Bloody Colourful World
An Indian man in Bangalore has turned his wedding reception into a blood donation drive, according to a report from the BBC. Despite opposition from his parents, who consider 'blood-shed' during a wedding as inauspicious, he and his wife, she a first time donor while he is well-known as a campaigner for blood donation, led the way for blood donations from most of the guests at the party. It isn't for nothing that he's known as Blood Kumar in Bangalore.
If you're inspired by his story and want to donate blood, you can check out the Singapore Red Cross website for more information. Don't worry, it's virtually painless! Just try not to think too much about the large-bore canula stuck in your vein.
***
The Library of Congress has a wealth of websites and materials online of digitised library collections, including its well known and well stocked American Memory website. Among the treasures they have put online in their online exhibitions is a remarkable set of photographs, the Prokudin-Gorskii photographic record. Taken between 1900 and 1915, they document the landscape, architecture, and people of the Russian Empire before it fell to the Bolsheviks. The photographer himself, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, was commissioned by the Tsar to take these photographs. What is unique about them is not just that they record a Russia that has since disappeared, but they do so in colour. Colour? In 1915? Prokudin-Gorskii used the ingenious method of exposing three negatives of each picture he wanted to take using three different filters of red, green, and blue. After developing the glass negatives, he would then project the slides in a lantern with the same colour filters, and the three overlapping images would form a colour image, in the same way that modern colour photography is also based on simulating real colour with three pigments.
For me, part of the charm of old photographs is their sharpness of focus. It's quite amazing how the old glass negatives could achieve even better resolution than today's film, and how the old photographers could stand lugging around cases of heavy and fragile equipment all around the countryside. Even more amazing is how they could persuade their subjects to hold still for long enough. Photography used to be an adventure: photographs of faraway exotic lands were highly sought after, and public screenings of lantern slides could attract large, paying audiences. The information explosion of the 20th century has resulted in people being able to get whatever information they want whenever they want it and in whatever quantity, no matter how specialised or obscure, if they are persistent enough. Sadly it has probably caused us to lose some of our sense of wonder and enthusiasm for exploration. With a veritable buffet of diversions available, the singleminded devotion to a particular hobby or passion, in the tradition of the Victorian amateur expert, might either be strengthened or diminished.
If you're inspired by his story and want to donate blood, you can check out the Singapore Red Cross website for more information. Don't worry, it's virtually painless! Just try not to think too much about the large-bore canula stuck in your vein.
The Library of Congress has a wealth of websites and materials online of digitised library collections, including its well known and well stocked American Memory website. Among the treasures they have put online in their online exhibitions is a remarkable set of photographs, the Prokudin-Gorskii photographic record. Taken between 1900 and 1915, they document the landscape, architecture, and people of the Russian Empire before it fell to the Bolsheviks. The photographer himself, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, was commissioned by the Tsar to take these photographs. What is unique about them is not just that they record a Russia that has since disappeared, but they do so in colour. Colour? In 1915? Prokudin-Gorskii used the ingenious method of exposing three negatives of each picture he wanted to take using three different filters of red, green, and blue. After developing the glass negatives, he would then project the slides in a lantern with the same colour filters, and the three overlapping images would form a colour image, in the same way that modern colour photography is also based on simulating real colour with three pigments.
For me, part of the charm of old photographs is their sharpness of focus. It's quite amazing how the old glass negatives could achieve even better resolution than today's film, and how the old photographers could stand lugging around cases of heavy and fragile equipment all around the countryside. Even more amazing is how they could persuade their subjects to hold still for long enough. Photography used to be an adventure: photographs of faraway exotic lands were highly sought after, and public screenings of lantern slides could attract large, paying audiences. The information explosion of the 20th century has resulted in people being able to get whatever information they want whenever they want it and in whatever quantity, no matter how specialised or obscure, if they are persistent enough. Sadly it has probably caused us to lose some of our sense of wonder and enthusiasm for exploration. With a veritable buffet of diversions available, the singleminded devotion to a particular hobby or passion, in the tradition of the Victorian amateur expert, might either be strengthened or diminished.
20 July 2006
The Limits of Poetry
Poetry is a craft of words (the 'word-craft' of the Anglo-Saxons) and words are limited in what they can portray or evoke, even though the range of what they can do is still very very wide indeed. Aside from the form of the text and the (optional) use of rhyme or meter, what distinguishes poetry from prose is the poetic mood: the understanding between the poet and the reader that there is a deeper meaning to the text, that it is not meant to be read merely literally.
There are several well-established devices for a poet to express the prosaically inexpressible: metaphor, metonymy, and so on. A poet may try to capture or express a mood by relating the circumstances which led to it, or by describing the kinds of feelings which it brings up in his mind or body, or by comparing it to something concrete with (hopefully) meaningful points of comparison. All these methods hinge on the necessity that for a mood or feeling to be accurately conveyed from a poet to a reader, it must be to some extent at least be based upon or start off from a shared experience, i.e. an experience not entirely unique to the poet, but something which suitably artful description and hint-dropping will enable the reader to recognise that same feeling and from there appreciate the poet's intent and perhaps how his feeling is different from our own. But there must be at least some recognition, otherwise the meaning is entirely lost.
This relates to how some poetry is untranslateable into other languages, because they depend on cultural assumptions and mindsets that would simply spoil the poem if they had to be explained at length (for instance if the 'point' of the poem is to allude to that particular aspect of the poet's cultural milieu). Likewise, if one has a unique emotion, or at least which one thinks is unique, how does one express oneself poetically, especially if that emotion is strong and yearns for expression? It is like trying to explain pain to a doctor: how painful is it? Perhaps the doctor could pinch you and ask you if it is 'as painful as that'? But the pain of a pinch is a different sort from the pain of a tummyache. What kind of pain, then, is it? A throbbing kind? or a sharp kind? And sharpness can be sharp like daggers or sharp like pin-pricks, but to some people a pin-prick hurts like a dagger, while to others daggers are merely pin-pricks. While we struggle to make the doctor understand, the pain overwhelms us.
So the limits of poetry are the limits that language places on our poetic intention. It is a limit on what we are able to share, and what we are able to evoke. Perhaps accuracy in pin-pointing a certain frame of mind or internal state is not the intention of all poetry, but a limited poetics means a limited human condition. We cannot share everything even with a lover; we are shut off from the internal intimate workings of others around us; we are individuals in the literal sense of the word. And so we come to the sad conclusion:
There are always things too private to tell, because we have no means to tell of them.
There are several well-established devices for a poet to express the prosaically inexpressible: metaphor, metonymy, and so on. A poet may try to capture or express a mood by relating the circumstances which led to it, or by describing the kinds of feelings which it brings up in his mind or body, or by comparing it to something concrete with (hopefully) meaningful points of comparison. All these methods hinge on the necessity that for a mood or feeling to be accurately conveyed from a poet to a reader, it must be to some extent at least be based upon or start off from a shared experience, i.e. an experience not entirely unique to the poet, but something which suitably artful description and hint-dropping will enable the reader to recognise that same feeling and from there appreciate the poet's intent and perhaps how his feeling is different from our own. But there must be at least some recognition, otherwise the meaning is entirely lost.
This relates to how some poetry is untranslateable into other languages, because they depend on cultural assumptions and mindsets that would simply spoil the poem if they had to be explained at length (for instance if the 'point' of the poem is to allude to that particular aspect of the poet's cultural milieu). Likewise, if one has a unique emotion, or at least which one thinks is unique, how does one express oneself poetically, especially if that emotion is strong and yearns for expression? It is like trying to explain pain to a doctor: how painful is it? Perhaps the doctor could pinch you and ask you if it is 'as painful as that'? But the pain of a pinch is a different sort from the pain of a tummyache. What kind of pain, then, is it? A throbbing kind? or a sharp kind? And sharpness can be sharp like daggers or sharp like pin-pricks, but to some people a pin-prick hurts like a dagger, while to others daggers are merely pin-pricks. While we struggle to make the doctor understand, the pain overwhelms us.
So the limits of poetry are the limits that language places on our poetic intention. It is a limit on what we are able to share, and what we are able to evoke. Perhaps accuracy in pin-pointing a certain frame of mind or internal state is not the intention of all poetry, but a limited poetics means a limited human condition. We cannot share everything even with a lover; we are shut off from the internal intimate workings of others around us; we are individuals in the literal sense of the word. And so we come to the sad conclusion:
There are always things too private to tell, because we have no means to tell of them.
16 July 2006
Things
Things / Jorge Luis Borges
My cane, my pocket change, this ring of keys,
The obedient lock, the belated notes
The few days left to me will not find time
To read, the deck of cards, the tabletop,
A book and crushed in its pages the withered
Violet, monument to an afternoon
Undoubtedly unforgettable, now forgotten,
The mirror in the west where a red sunrise
Blazes its illusion. How many things,
Files, doorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails,
Serve us like slaves who never say a word,
Blind and so mysteriously reserved.
They will endure beyond our vanishing;
And they will never know that we have gone.
(Trans. Stephen Kessler)
My cane, my pocket change, this ring of keys,
The obedient lock, the belated notes
The few days left to me will not find time
To read, the deck of cards, the tabletop,
A book and crushed in its pages the withered
Violet, monument to an afternoon
Undoubtedly unforgettable, now forgotten,
The mirror in the west where a red sunrise
Blazes its illusion. How many things,
Files, doorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails,
Serve us like slaves who never say a word,
Blind and so mysteriously reserved.
They will endure beyond our vanishing;
And they will never know that we have gone.
(Trans. Stephen Kessler)
09 July 2006
Cool Curves with Graphmatica
Graphmatica is a freeware mathematical graphing program that's popular in schools for teaching curve sketching and the properties of mathematical curves. One reason why it's so popular is that it's really easy to play around with different equations to produce all sorts of cool shapes. The Mactutor History of Mathematics Archive has a webpage featuring famous curves: not Marilyn Monroe or Marlene Dietrich, but more abstract classic beauties like the Hyperbola, Ellipse, and rather more obscure exotics like the Lemniscate of Bernoulli and the Quadratrix of Hippias.
So while playing with Graphmatica I found a way to construct the Yin-Yang symbol using only two simple polar equations: it is quite striking to see how the ancients concocted a symbol whose shape is so purely mathematical. Simply graph both r = tanh t and r = -tanh t and the two 'tadpoles' which form the picture will fit into each other. For the little circles, x^2 + (y + 0.5)^2 = 0.0525 and x^2 + (y - 0.5)^2 = 0.0525 seem to fit the dimensions best.
In my opinion, though, the cutest one I've found so far is the 'egg in egg' equation, r = t sin t, which really does look like an egg nestled in another egg! There are also a whole lot of equations to draw heart-shaped curves. The cardioid family of curves is perhaps best known, but they don't have the tapered bottom of the classic valentines heart. Math World has an encyclopaedia entry on the topic.
So while playing with Graphmatica I found a way to construct the Yin-Yang symbol using only two simple polar equations: it is quite striking to see how the ancients concocted a symbol whose shape is so purely mathematical. Simply graph both r = tanh t and r = -tanh t and the two 'tadpoles' which form the picture will fit into each other. For the little circles, x^2 + (y + 0.5)^2 = 0.0525 and x^2 + (y - 0.5)^2 = 0.0525 seem to fit the dimensions best.
In my opinion, though, the cutest one I've found so far is the 'egg in egg' equation, r = t sin t, which really does look like an egg nestled in another egg! There are also a whole lot of equations to draw heart-shaped curves. The cardioid family of curves is perhaps best known, but they don't have the tapered bottom of the classic valentines heart. Math World has an encyclopaedia entry on the topic.
30 June 2006
Running Backwards Into the Future
The anthropology blog Savage Minds has a recent post on the spatial metaphors we use to refer to time, for instance if we visualise the past as being behind us and the future as being in front of us, or vice versa. This was inspired by a feature in the New York Times of an article in the journal Cognitive Science, which claimed that speakers of the Aymara language are the only people who conceive of the past as being in front of them and the future as being behind them. Anthropologists being sensitive to such sweeping statements about human cultural practices ("the only people..."), the Savage Minds writer pointed out further examples of such perspectives on time among some Pacific peoples, and quoted Walter Benjamin on the Angel of History, whose 'face is turned towards the past.'
But is it so alien to, presumably, readers of the New York Times, to conceive of the past as being in front of you? Why do we find it so natural to think about the future as being ahead of us? I think it's because of the metaphors we often use for the notion of progress: moving forward into the future, climbing up and ahead; indeed the word 'progress' means to move in front (as opposed to 'regress'), and one more often than not sees the future being depicted as something better than the past and better than the present. Apocalyptic prophecies, one must remember, are rare and cautionary pronouncements against the prevailing tide of unwarranted optimism. So equating the future with improvement (and thus a forward movement) is not necessarily valid, but is so common in our modern culture that we conflate the two notions.
Logically speaking, it makes more sense to think of the past as being in front of you (before you, so to speak.) The past, after all, contains the only events that we can know of (aside from the present, but the present is a fugitive thing.) We can only 'see' the past, but we cannot see into the future because it hasn't happened yet. Being humans, with our eyes in front of our head and a forward-pointing field of view, we can only see the things in front of us, but are blissfully unaware of what's going on behind our heads (thus the nefariousness and fearsome quality of being backstabbed). Therefore, wouldn't it make sense for us to be facing towards the past, which we can see, and have our backs towards the future, which we cannot see? Granted, it is odd, given the notion of moving towards the future, to be thus facing the wrong way and hurtling bum-first into the unknown, but it is more realistic than fooling oneself into believing that one can see the future and going face-first but blind into the mist of what is yet to be. At least when we face backwards, we can still see the past (rather than nothing at all), and so learn from the mistakes of the past. Perhaps that is why 'history tends to repeat itself,' and our errors cycle themselves again and again, because we aren't used to facing the past, and thus have not the benefit of retrospection. So go, all ye merry folk, out into the world, and try going bum-first, though it might seem counterintuitive. You might find it better to have a good view of the rear!
But is it so alien to, presumably, readers of the New York Times, to conceive of the past as being in front of you? Why do we find it so natural to think about the future as being ahead of us? I think it's because of the metaphors we often use for the notion of progress: moving forward into the future, climbing up and ahead; indeed the word 'progress' means to move in front (as opposed to 'regress'), and one more often than not sees the future being depicted as something better than the past and better than the present. Apocalyptic prophecies, one must remember, are rare and cautionary pronouncements against the prevailing tide of unwarranted optimism. So equating the future with improvement (and thus a forward movement) is not necessarily valid, but is so common in our modern culture that we conflate the two notions.
Logically speaking, it makes more sense to think of the past as being in front of you (before you, so to speak.) The past, after all, contains the only events that we can know of (aside from the present, but the present is a fugitive thing.) We can only 'see' the past, but we cannot see into the future because it hasn't happened yet. Being humans, with our eyes in front of our head and a forward-pointing field of view, we can only see the things in front of us, but are blissfully unaware of what's going on behind our heads (thus the nefariousness and fearsome quality of being backstabbed). Therefore, wouldn't it make sense for us to be facing towards the past, which we can see, and have our backs towards the future, which we cannot see? Granted, it is odd, given the notion of moving towards the future, to be thus facing the wrong way and hurtling bum-first into the unknown, but it is more realistic than fooling oneself into believing that one can see the future and going face-first but blind into the mist of what is yet to be. At least when we face backwards, we can still see the past (rather than nothing at all), and so learn from the mistakes of the past. Perhaps that is why 'history tends to repeat itself,' and our errors cycle themselves again and again, because we aren't used to facing the past, and thus have not the benefit of retrospection. So go, all ye merry folk, out into the world, and try going bum-first, though it might seem counterintuitive. You might find it better to have a good view of the rear!
08 June 2006
Today and Yesterday in Pictures
Meeting Juliet to see DINOSAURS (or casts of dinosaurs) at the Science Centre!
"My my what big teeth you have!" "All the better to grin at you with."
Sue's nice ass.
Sister and her SMP partner: went with her to NUS this morning to see what mutant finangling she is working up in the lab with her friends.
Budding Biologists intently listening to a lecture on floral diagrams by Dr Shawn Lum.
Guo Liang through the looking-flask.
Two earnest trainees.
Around an NIE canteen table, clockwise from left: Shireen, Dr Beverly Goh, Tseyang, Enping, Dr Shirley Lim, Guo Liang, Me. Photographed by Dr Shawn Lum.
06 June 2006
Further Secrets of the Beauty Industry -- Revealed!
A former teacher of mine stumbled upon this blog, and read my post on the language of the beauty industry. In her email to me she pointed out two errors which she has kindly given me permission to post below:
As further evidence of the manipulativeness and lie-mongering of the body-image industry, there is an advertisement that appears quite regularly in the papers, showing a female celebrity leaning forward in a low-cut top and a headline screaming: "Push-ups should be in the gym. Not on your bust!" In the text of the ad, this company touts "all-natural bust enhancement", promising "pure essential oils that we massage gently into your breast tissues to give you a more shapely, curvaceous, and feminine bust-line." Unfortunately, the same advertisement also prints in type three times smaller at the bottom of the page: "There is no scientific proof that any non-surgical treatment currently available can enlarge breasts." One is met with a conundrum -- which part of the ad is lying? Is it the part claiming bust enhancements or the part saying that there's no proof any of this works that is in error? Contrary to what years of source and contextual analysis have taught us to think, it is actually the latter that is wrong. While one might doubt the efficacy of this particular herbal treatment for bust enlargement, the blatant statement that no proof exists for non-surgical breast enlargement is outright wrong. There are a number of processes that do result in breast enlargement without recourse to surgery! Namely
Therefore, heed this warning: just because it's fine print doesn't mean it's more reliable that the stuff that's printed in big letters. It can be just as or even more in error than the main text!
"Traditional Javanese massage ain't no bump n grind. It's a continuous hell of pushing in the points in your body. Think needling in but with your fingers. Incidentally, I swear by Javanese massage to get back my figure after childbirth. Check with my massage lady. The picture of a sweet looking Javanese lady with flowers in her hair kneading your back is a LIE
Rejuvenating essence is boiled placenta. It's the placenta that supposedly has rejuvenating qualities not infant's blood. My aunt-in-law has a fat ang bao ready for me if I give her my next placenta.
I have yet to splurge on pureed pond scum or blinking red lamps but frankly speaking, as long as these products work, no one (ok, except those organic/environmental purists) is going to question too much about what goes into them."
As further evidence of the manipulativeness and lie-mongering of the body-image industry, there is an advertisement that appears quite regularly in the papers, showing a female celebrity leaning forward in a low-cut top and a headline screaming: "Push-ups should be in the gym. Not on your bust!" In the text of the ad, this company touts "all-natural bust enhancement", promising "pure essential oils that we massage gently into your breast tissues to give you a more shapely, curvaceous, and feminine bust-line." Unfortunately, the same advertisement also prints in type three times smaller at the bottom of the page: "There is no scientific proof that any non-surgical treatment currently available can enlarge breasts." One is met with a conundrum -- which part of the ad is lying? Is it the part claiming bust enhancements or the part saying that there's no proof any of this works that is in error? Contrary to what years of source and contextual analysis have taught us to think, it is actually the latter that is wrong. While one might doubt the efficacy of this particular herbal treatment for bust enlargement, the blatant statement that no proof exists for non-surgical breast enlargement is outright wrong. There are a number of processes that do result in breast enlargement without recourse to surgery! Namely
- puberty,
- pregnancy,
- weight gain (and the proportional bulking up of all the fleshy bits of the body) and
- inflammation.
Therefore, heed this warning: just because it's fine print doesn't mean it's more reliable that the stuff that's printed in big letters. It can be just as or even more in error than the main text!
04 June 2006
Keep Orchard Road Greenish
Today's Sunday Times published an opinion article by journalist Ignatius Low suggesting that Orchard Road's wayside trees be removed because they block the view of its buildings and decorative displays. I was moved to write an email to him in reply, which I reproduce below:
---------
Dear Mr Low:
I read with interest your opinion article on defoliating Orchard Road. I wish to point out a few disadvantages of your proposal:
1. Lack of shading and excessive glare
Overhead shelter from wayside trees screens out direct sunlight. If they are removed, the mid-day glare would make walking along Orchard Road unbearable. The wayside benches would certainly not be as popular as they are now, and while the ice-cream sellers along the shopping district will probably benefit from an increase in sales to sweaty and uncomfortable pedestrians, their workday would be very unpleasant.
2. Absorption of heat by concrete and built structures
Concrete and paving stones tend to absorb heat in the day due to direct insolation and release them at night when ambient temperatures are cooler. Surface temperatures on building surfaces and rooftops can reach up to 60 or 70 degrees Celsius at the height of day. Trees and groundcover (such as grass) on the other hand keep temperatures within limits by their transpiration. By removing them, the overall temperature of the surroundings will increase. This is not speculation: ambient temperatures in the city centre are 1-2 degrees greater than those in the suburban heartland. This is attributed to the aforementioned urban heat island effect. Higher temperatures will culminate in higher air-conditioning electricity bills and higher running costs for our shopping centres. Less people will be willing to walk in the open air, especially with new plans to connect all the Orchard shopping centres by underpass into a seamless air-conditioned warren, leaving very few people to admire the soaring architecture that the removal of trees has exposed.
3. Increased dust and suspended particulates
Orchard Rd, being a busy vehicular thoroughfare as well as a pedestrian one, naturally has a large amount of dust and smoke particles in the air from passing cars and vehicles. Idling engines, so common in a traffic jam, produce more particulates because of incomplete combustion. Trees and shrubs have a filtration effect and contribute somewhat to reducing dust in the air.
4. Aesthetic disharmony
The areas surrounding Orchard Road are high-value residential and commercial areas. Among the landmarks and prominent districts nearby are the Botanic Gardens, the Istana, the 'Embassy Row' along Napier Road, as well as residential areas in Grange Road and Tanglin. A large proportion of the air of exclusivity these places retain is due to the greenery planted in and around them. These serve to preserve privacy and soften the harshness of the urban landscape. Why else would the Istana, arguably the most exclusive and important residence in the city, be set within hectares of parkland? If Orchard Road's trees are replaced by, say, concrete sculpture or large umbrellas, its appearance would be disjointed from the adjacent districts.
5. Loss of tropical identity
Singapore is in an unusual position of having a First-World shopping district in the tropics. It is precisely the demands of a tropical climate that led to the original tree-planting campaigns of Singapore's early nationhood. We cannot duplicate the urban chic of say New York and Tokyo because it is unsuitable for our climate and surroundings. Indeed, during recent heat waves their inhabitants have suffered. Stripping Orchard of its trees would do injustice to the Garden City image our country has cultivated over the past few decades; quite literally it would be an injustice to the name of the road itself. At a time when tropical architecture is looking into rooftop gardens and other urban plantings as a means of temperature control and decoration, bare stones and paving tiles are steps backwards.
I hope you see what my point is: that trees are essential elements of the built environment in Singapore. Certainly you are not serious with your proposal and raised it only to provoke readers to think about how essential greenery is to our quality of city life.
Sincerely,
Brandon Seah
---------
Dear Mr Low:
I read with interest your opinion article on defoliating Orchard Road. I wish to point out a few disadvantages of your proposal:
1. Lack of shading and excessive glare
Overhead shelter from wayside trees screens out direct sunlight. If they are removed, the mid-day glare would make walking along Orchard Road unbearable. The wayside benches would certainly not be as popular as they are now, and while the ice-cream sellers along the shopping district will probably benefit from an increase in sales to sweaty and uncomfortable pedestrians, their workday would be very unpleasant.
2. Absorption of heat by concrete and built structures
Concrete and paving stones tend to absorb heat in the day due to direct insolation and release them at night when ambient temperatures are cooler. Surface temperatures on building surfaces and rooftops can reach up to 60 or 70 degrees Celsius at the height of day. Trees and groundcover (such as grass) on the other hand keep temperatures within limits by their transpiration. By removing them, the overall temperature of the surroundings will increase. This is not speculation: ambient temperatures in the city centre are 1-2 degrees greater than those in the suburban heartland. This is attributed to the aforementioned urban heat island effect. Higher temperatures will culminate in higher air-conditioning electricity bills and higher running costs for our shopping centres. Less people will be willing to walk in the open air, especially with new plans to connect all the Orchard shopping centres by underpass into a seamless air-conditioned warren, leaving very few people to admire the soaring architecture that the removal of trees has exposed.
3. Increased dust and suspended particulates
Orchard Rd, being a busy vehicular thoroughfare as well as a pedestrian one, naturally has a large amount of dust and smoke particles in the air from passing cars and vehicles. Idling engines, so common in a traffic jam, produce more particulates because of incomplete combustion. Trees and shrubs have a filtration effect and contribute somewhat to reducing dust in the air.
4. Aesthetic disharmony
The areas surrounding Orchard Road are high-value residential and commercial areas. Among the landmarks and prominent districts nearby are the Botanic Gardens, the Istana, the 'Embassy Row' along Napier Road, as well as residential areas in Grange Road and Tanglin. A large proportion of the air of exclusivity these places retain is due to the greenery planted in and around them. These serve to preserve privacy and soften the harshness of the urban landscape. Why else would the Istana, arguably the most exclusive and important residence in the city, be set within hectares of parkland? If Orchard Road's trees are replaced by, say, concrete sculpture or large umbrellas, its appearance would be disjointed from the adjacent districts.
5. Loss of tropical identity
Singapore is in an unusual position of having a First-World shopping district in the tropics. It is precisely the demands of a tropical climate that led to the original tree-planting campaigns of Singapore's early nationhood. We cannot duplicate the urban chic of say New York and Tokyo because it is unsuitable for our climate and surroundings. Indeed, during recent heat waves their inhabitants have suffered. Stripping Orchard of its trees would do injustice to the Garden City image our country has cultivated over the past few decades; quite literally it would be an injustice to the name of the road itself. At a time when tropical architecture is looking into rooftop gardens and other urban plantings as a means of temperature control and decoration, bare stones and paving tiles are steps backwards.
I hope you see what my point is: that trees are essential elements of the built environment in Singapore. Certainly you are not serious with your proposal and raised it only to provoke readers to think about how essential greenery is to our quality of city life.
Sincerely,
Brandon Seah
03 June 2006
Curiosities of the Past
Sometimes the past throws rather alarming things at you:
and
"Moreover there is a fossil of burnt human bones left by the Malayan cannibals of the Mesolithic Age displayed in [sic] Singapore National Museum." -- Hsu Yun-Tsiao, JMBRAS 45.I.1-9.
and
"There is the record of a sea-gypsy [i.e. Orang Laut] who from his boat in the Singapore River watched Raffles arrive and was still there 60 years later; still a fisherman, still with no home but his canoe. In the happenings that had turned his solitude into a busy port he had taken no part whatever." -- R.J. Wilkinson, JMBRAS 13.II.17-21.
28 May 2006
brandon. Obs. rare. Also brandom.
brandon. Obs. rare. Also brandom. (a. F. brandon burning wisp of straw, etc.: com. Romanic: - L. type *brandon-em, f. Teut. brand, burning)
1. A torch. lit. and fig. (frequent in Drummond) a. 1649 Drumm. of Hawth. Shadow of Judgm., Her right hand swings a brandon in the air. -- Poems 14, His [Cupid's] Darts... all for nought starve as doth his Brandom.
2. A kind of French rustic dance (see Littre) 1755 Gentl. Mag. XXV. 175 The Brandons were celebrated in many cities in France the first Sunday of Lent, round bon fires of straw, whence they had their name.
-- Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed.
20 May 2006
Beauty-Speak
Beauty products have a special vocabulary unique unto them. A glance at the papers can easily tell you what the language and iconography of their advertisements is aimed at achieiving: either the appearance of scientific endorsement (white-coated beauty practitioners working amid flasks and test-tubes with fantabulistic instruments to diagnose and treat all manner of aesthetic defects) or the impression of wholesome natural origins (reference to 'organic' or 'herbal' ingredients, earthy tones, and botanical imagery).
Likewise with the language used in their advertisements: scientific terms are bandied about with little or no understanding of the concepts behind their use. Let's translate some terms pulled at random from posters, flyers, and magazines:
It is, indeed, worth investigating all such claims with a sceptical eye. The beauty industry thrives on easily suggestible, gullible, and insecure dupes with inadequate knowledge of science and technology, who, come to think of it, comprise a sizeable portion of the populace. They could do little better with their present advertising strategy, except perhaps to recruit Richard Gere as a celebrity spokesman.
Likewise with the language used in their advertisements: scientific terms are bandied about with little or no understanding of the concepts behind their use. Let's translate some terms pulled at random from posters, flyers, and magazines:
- Pure Extract of Thermal Plankton = Pureed pond scum
- Dermabrasion = Sandpapering skin
- Collagen solution = Boiled-down bones
- Intense pulsed light therapy = Blinking lamps
- Natural herbal infusion = Garden weed tea
- Herbal collagen infusion = Bak kut teh
- Traditional Javanese massage = Bump 'n' grind
- Moisturising applicator = Damp towel
- Rejuvenating essence = Boiled infant blood
It is, indeed, worth investigating all such claims with a sceptical eye. The beauty industry thrives on easily suggestible, gullible, and insecure dupes with inadequate knowledge of science and technology, who, come to think of it, comprise a sizeable portion of the populace. They could do little better with their present advertising strategy, except perhaps to recruit Richard Gere as a celebrity spokesman.
12 May 2006
A New Genus of Monkey
An article has appeared in Science Express, an online publication of Science magazine that publishes articles online before they appear in the print edition, delimiting a new monospecific genus of African monkey. The monkey was originally described as a new species last year, based on photographic evidence, but the team that described it has since obtained a carcass from a local farmer, and based on molecular evidence, has defined a new genus, Rungwecebus to accomodate the species, now called R. kipunjii.
The monkey was originally accomodated by the genus Lophocebus, but genetic material obtained from the specimen allowed molecular analysis showing that genetically, this new species is closer related to baboons than other monkeys, even though morphologically (that is, in terms of form) it is quite unlike a baboon. While I am usually cautious about taxonomic judgements based on molecular data alone, it is still worth highlighting how much we do not know about the primates, our closest relatives. Despite them being large and active mammals in which people naturally take an interest, a new species can still be found, and even more tantalisingly still, turn out to be a new genus altogether. If we do not even know about what is out there in the wild, how can we be confident about the completeness of our biological knowledge? Therefore, in purely empirical terms, field biology is a superb field for observation-based research, where all one needs are eyes to see with, ears to listen with, and patience and tenacity to pursue with. For less money and possibly more satisfaction (and a good workout, too) one can be just as productive as in other hot fields of research. Imagine, if a huge-ass noisy monkey can be so elusive, what abundantly more is there waiting to be found in the mesoscopic and microscopic level!
The monkey was originally accomodated by the genus Lophocebus, but genetic material obtained from the specimen allowed molecular analysis showing that genetically, this new species is closer related to baboons than other monkeys, even though morphologically (that is, in terms of form) it is quite unlike a baboon. While I am usually cautious about taxonomic judgements based on molecular data alone, it is still worth highlighting how much we do not know about the primates, our closest relatives. Despite them being large and active mammals in which people naturally take an interest, a new species can still be found, and even more tantalisingly still, turn out to be a new genus altogether. If we do not even know about what is out there in the wild, how can we be confident about the completeness of our biological knowledge? Therefore, in purely empirical terms, field biology is a superb field for observation-based research, where all one needs are eyes to see with, ears to listen with, and patience and tenacity to pursue with. For less money and possibly more satisfaction (and a good workout, too) one can be just as productive as in other hot fields of research. Imagine, if a huge-ass noisy monkey can be so elusive, what abundantly more is there waiting to be found in the mesoscopic and microscopic level!
What a Friend We Have in Jesus
At church on Sunday, the choir sang this hymn as the anthem. As an experiment to enliven the traditional service, we had only three men sing, accompanied by guitars and banjo, to give it a country and bluegrass feel. Later on, we heard the very same song being sung again after the service, this time with drums and electric guitar backing it up, which turned out to be the youth ministry rehearsing this hymn, along with other contemporary songs, in the hall upstairs.
Hearing the same song being used by two different groups in my church brought to mind how different and yet how similar are the needs and worries of the adults and the youth. They might seem very divergent to begin with: the adults with their problems in the workplace, with raising a family, earning enough to feed them and clothe them, and not letting everyday distractions interfere with their spiritual walk, while the youth are beginning their process of socialisation in school and with their friends, struggling with parent problems, learning about life's disappointments and basically wondering what's out there waiting for them in their lives to come.
No matter what problems may assail us, though, this hymn points us to something that cuts through all of them, namely the privilege and comfort of being able to 'carry everything to God in prayer.' And it's true that we have many times had (to paraphrase the refrain) peace forfeited and needless pain borne because we think we are strong enough to solve our own problems with the ways of the world when our strength is never enough. Indeed a youth thinking about the future and how ugly the world can be might despair save for having our Saviour who is 'still our refuge', and an older person might feel worn down and tired from all the stress and demands on his person, but he 'should never be discouraged', if he 'take(s) it to the Lord in prayer.'
Ultimately, though, one major reason that we turn to the Lord for solace is because of death, and our fear of when and how it might come. The third time I heard the hymn on Sunday was while I was walking out to the MRT station to go home, and passed a void deck where a wake was being held. The mourners were closing their eyes and slowly swaying and I could feel that the tune and words were heartfelt and earnest. When we really do experience grief, then, we can trust that 'in his arms he'll take and shield thee; thou wilt find a solace there.'
Hearing the same song being used by two different groups in my church brought to mind how different and yet how similar are the needs and worries of the adults and the youth. They might seem very divergent to begin with: the adults with their problems in the workplace, with raising a family, earning enough to feed them and clothe them, and not letting everyday distractions interfere with their spiritual walk, while the youth are beginning their process of socialisation in school and with their friends, struggling with parent problems, learning about life's disappointments and basically wondering what's out there waiting for them in their lives to come.
No matter what problems may assail us, though, this hymn points us to something that cuts through all of them, namely the privilege and comfort of being able to 'carry everything to God in prayer.' And it's true that we have many times had (to paraphrase the refrain) peace forfeited and needless pain borne because we think we are strong enough to solve our own problems with the ways of the world when our strength is never enough. Indeed a youth thinking about the future and how ugly the world can be might despair save for having our Saviour who is 'still our refuge', and an older person might feel worn down and tired from all the stress and demands on his person, but he 'should never be discouraged', if he 'take(s) it to the Lord in prayer.'
Ultimately, though, one major reason that we turn to the Lord for solace is because of death, and our fear of when and how it might come. The third time I heard the hymn on Sunday was while I was walking out to the MRT station to go home, and passed a void deck where a wake was being held. The mourners were closing their eyes and slowly swaying and I could feel that the tune and words were heartfelt and earnest. When we really do experience grief, then, we can trust that 'in his arms he'll take and shield thee; thou wilt find a solace there.'
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30 NIV)
What a Friend We Have in Jesus
What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.
Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Saviour still our refuge; take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do they friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he'll take and shield thee; thou wilt find a solace there.
07 May 2006
Richard Gere: Latter-Day Imperialist or Tourist Dupe
Richard Gere stars in a television and billboard ad campaign for the credit card company Visa, which goes something like this:
Gere is touring a hustle-bustle oriental Indian market with his turbanned minder and overhears a conversation a little girl has with a shopkeeper. She tells the shopkeeper that brother is going on a journey, and wants to buy a caged bird to release on his departure, for good luck. Of course she can only afford one bird with the handful of tinkly coins she offers up, but Gere steps in after she leaves and whips out his all-powerful Visa card, and probably buys up the whole shop, because when the girl runs back to where her brother is leaving and when she holds up her single caged bird a whole flock just swoops into the air behind her and everyone is amazed. She looks back and Gere just looks around pretending not to know anything about it. A sitar-riff and the commercial ends.
Some people have complained about the colonialist and orientalist imagery in this advertisement. From how everyone seems to be wearing turbans and traditional dress, to the bustling chaos of the bazaar, to the quaint local customs (releasing birds before a journey), the setting is doubtlessly exoticised (and also sanitised -- where are the houseflies?). Richard Gere, dressed in a white outfit, is the Great White Man taking on his eponymous burden, and flashing his modern symbol of power -- the credit card -- to benevolently help a poor little girl in sad penury. As a result, they see it as offensive to the Indians depicted in the ad.
What I see, however, is a meticulously planned and marvellously successful scam pulled off to get Richard Gere to spend his money buying something he does not need, i.e. Richard Gere is the dupe, not the oppressed former colonial race. The tell-tale signs are all quite obvious once you look out for them.
Look at the evidence! It is undeniable. Richard Gere is a typical Tourist Dupe. Let this be a lesson, all you credit-card wielders, drunk with the pecuniary power you hold in your wallet. Do not let such elaborate schemes fool you, when you travel to some far off exotic place expecting to treat the local populace with benevolence.
Gere is touring a hustle-bustle oriental Indian market with his turbanned minder and overhears a conversation a little girl has with a shopkeeper. She tells the shopkeeper that brother is going on a journey, and wants to buy a caged bird to release on his departure, for good luck. Of course she can only afford one bird with the handful of tinkly coins she offers up, but Gere steps in after she leaves and whips out his all-powerful Visa card, and probably buys up the whole shop, because when the girl runs back to where her brother is leaving and when she holds up her single caged bird a whole flock just swoops into the air behind her and everyone is amazed. She looks back and Gere just looks around pretending not to know anything about it. A sitar-riff and the commercial ends.
Some people have complained about the colonialist and orientalist imagery in this advertisement. From how everyone seems to be wearing turbans and traditional dress, to the bustling chaos of the bazaar, to the quaint local customs (releasing birds before a journey), the setting is doubtlessly exoticised (and also sanitised -- where are the houseflies?). Richard Gere, dressed in a white outfit, is the Great White Man taking on his eponymous burden, and flashing his modern symbol of power -- the credit card -- to benevolently help a poor little girl in sad penury. As a result, they see it as offensive to the Indians depicted in the ad.
What I see, however, is a meticulously planned and marvellously successful scam pulled off to get Richard Gere to spend his money buying something he does not need, i.e. Richard Gere is the dupe, not the oppressed former colonial race. The tell-tale signs are all quite obvious once you look out for them.
- He has a local guide to bring him around the market. Most tour guides have private deals with shopkeepers to bring sightseers to their door, and accept a cut of the profits from the increased patronage. Gere's guide is probably no different. Look at his turban! It's the same colour and style as the turban worn by the bird-shop owner. Doesn't that tell you something?
- The girl happens to speak English to a shopkeeper even though they're both Indian. Conveniently, she does this right in front of Gere. I'm sure that hospitality to tourists doesn't extend to speaking their language in front of them even when the conversation is no business of theirs. Here, of course, it is Gere's business. More precisely, they want to get Gere's business.
- The guide helpfully explains to Gere the quaint local tradition of releasing birds, and throws in the key point: more birds, more luck. If one bird was enough, would Gere bother to buy the whole flock? No he'd have, at the most, paid for the girl's single bird. But that'd be poor business for the stallholder.
- Visa is accepted in an open-air street market stall. Yet another point of suspicion. The only reason why I think this could be so is that the stall is in a tourist market and obviously only tourists would use a credit card with small purchases -- even the girl used coins.
- The flock of birds are all of the same breed, and roughly the same healthy condition. You'd expect a small market stall to have a small number of birds of each variety rather than a single huge flock of white columbiforms. Conclusion: they were all prepared beforehand, and fairly recently too, in anticipation of Rich Tourist whom the stallholder's cousin/business partner/local tour guide tipped him off about.
- Finally: the girl doesn't get to release the bird before Gere lets his flock loose. Obviously she keeps the bird to re-use with every new tourist dupe that comes around. It's tame and won't fly off. As for the others, they've probably been trained to fly back again after a while. Brilliant.
Look at the evidence! It is undeniable. Richard Gere is a typical Tourist Dupe. Let this be a lesson, all you credit-card wielders, drunk with the pecuniary power you hold in your wallet. Do not let such elaborate schemes fool you, when you travel to some far off exotic place expecting to treat the local populace with benevolence.
06 May 2006
New method for synthesising Tamiflu
Elias Corey, the 1990 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, and two of his students have worked out a new synthesis pathway for the anti-flu drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir).
The new method requires simpler starting compounds, namely 1,3-butadiene and acrylic acid, both of which are used in common industrial reactions for producing polymers, whereas the commercial method used by the pharmaceutical company Roche requires shikimic acid, which is extracted from the spice plant star anise. Furthermore, the yield for the new method is good, explosive intermediates (which pose a danger in the manufacturing process and hence drive up costs and production time/bulk) are avoided, and the use of what the authors call "a novel SnBr4-catalyzed bromoacetamidation reaction which was completely regio- and stereoselective" (between products 9 and 10 in the diagram) eliminates the problem of undesired enantiomers, i.e. similar molecules with the same parts oriented in the wrong way. In pharmaceutical compounds, molecular shape is important because drugs work through molecular recognition and binding, which would not occur if the chemical formula is correct but the wrong stereoisomer is used. More commonly, both the 'correct' and 'incorrect' form are produced simultaneously by synthetic methods which do not differentiate between the two forms, thus producing a mixture. In rare cases the wrong isomer might even have toxic effects, while the chemical similarity of the two isomeric forms make them hard to separate from each other. Therefore, a regio- and stereo-selective catalyst is a very fortunate discovery.
In their paper, the authors Yeung, Hong, and Corey are optimistic about scaling up the process to industrial level. Hopefully, this might reduce the cost of Tamiflu production and make it more accessible to poorer countries where the threat of bird flu is greater. It's also worth pointing out that they did their work independently of Roche, which manufactures Tamiflu, save for obtaining a sample of the compound for comparison and identification of their product. In problems of great import, perhaps such a problem-solving model is more effective, viz. welcoming solutions from private individuals and academia alongside commercial and government agencies, because as the proverb goes, more hands make light work. It's ironic, and a little bit sad, that the Age of the Amateur has not really taken off despite all the opportunities for communication and the widespread availability of information around the world today. Most of us are pretty passive about the technologies and processes that affect us, and very few people take an interest in tinkering and working to find better solutions for themselves, more adapted to their local and personal situations. It's easy to blame commerce and industry, which produce neatly packaged, tamper-proof products that consumers treat like black boxes: they see the input and see the output but don't really care about what goes on inside to change one to the other. In the case of computer and software technology, tinkering is actually discouraged by commercial interests, who have taken the appellation 'hacking', which originally referred to enthusiasts toying with and modifying computer code, and made it into a fearsome nebulous term that is equated with malicious infringement of privacy and wilful wrongdoing. More people should take an interest in how things work, so that with the vast quantity of untapped intellectual potential out there (people whose intellects are underemployed, or who have free time to pursue hobbies and interests), a form of distributed computing can be applied to the thinking populace and a culture of innovation can develop.
The new method requires simpler starting compounds, namely 1,3-butadiene and acrylic acid, both of which are used in common industrial reactions for producing polymers, whereas the commercial method used by the pharmaceutical company Roche requires shikimic acid, which is extracted from the spice plant star anise. Furthermore, the yield for the new method is good, explosive intermediates (which pose a danger in the manufacturing process and hence drive up costs and production time/bulk) are avoided, and the use of what the authors call "a novel SnBr4-catalyzed bromoacetamidation reaction which was completely regio- and stereoselective" (between products 9 and 10 in the diagram) eliminates the problem of undesired enantiomers, i.e. similar molecules with the same parts oriented in the wrong way. In pharmaceutical compounds, molecular shape is important because drugs work through molecular recognition and binding, which would not occur if the chemical formula is correct but the wrong stereoisomer is used. More commonly, both the 'correct' and 'incorrect' form are produced simultaneously by synthetic methods which do not differentiate between the two forms, thus producing a mixture. In rare cases the wrong isomer might even have toxic effects, while the chemical similarity of the two isomeric forms make them hard to separate from each other. Therefore, a regio- and stereo-selective catalyst is a very fortunate discovery.
In their paper, the authors Yeung, Hong, and Corey are optimistic about scaling up the process to industrial level. Hopefully, this might reduce the cost of Tamiflu production and make it more accessible to poorer countries where the threat of bird flu is greater. It's also worth pointing out that they did their work independently of Roche, which manufactures Tamiflu, save for obtaining a sample of the compound for comparison and identification of their product. In problems of great import, perhaps such a problem-solving model is more effective, viz. welcoming solutions from private individuals and academia alongside commercial and government agencies, because as the proverb goes, more hands make light work. It's ironic, and a little bit sad, that the Age of the Amateur has not really taken off despite all the opportunities for communication and the widespread availability of information around the world today. Most of us are pretty passive about the technologies and processes that affect us, and very few people take an interest in tinkering and working to find better solutions for themselves, more adapted to their local and personal situations. It's easy to blame commerce and industry, which produce neatly packaged, tamper-proof products that consumers treat like black boxes: they see the input and see the output but don't really care about what goes on inside to change one to the other. In the case of computer and software technology, tinkering is actually discouraged by commercial interests, who have taken the appellation 'hacking', which originally referred to enthusiasts toying with and modifying computer code, and made it into a fearsome nebulous term that is equated with malicious infringement of privacy and wilful wrongdoing. More people should take an interest in how things work, so that with the vast quantity of untapped intellectual potential out there (people whose intellects are underemployed, or who have free time to pursue hobbies and interests), a form of distributed computing can be applied to the thinking populace and a culture of innovation can develop.
05 May 2006
Ellen Pompeo is hot
04 May 2006
Deep Ocean Trawls, Flat Land Crawls
The Census of Marine Zooplankton, a part of the Census of Marine Life has quite literally netted some results that were reported in the media today. The key messages of the study, as with almost every biodiversity study ever done, are that there are many new species out there awaiting discovery, that more collection will surely throw up more new discoveries, and what we have already found is only incompletely understood.
One bugbear I have, though, and it's a really big tardigrade, is how DNA sequencing is being touted as a "quick and easy [way] to identify species". Call me a stick in the mud, but I believe that there is more to species uniqueness than DNA sequence uniqueness. The relationship between the numerical difference in DNA sequence and the taxonomic level of difference (be it individual variation within a population, variation between two divergent populations, the difference between two species, genera, etc.) is incompletely known. The difference between two species might not even show up as a different sequence, specifically where polyploidy is the mode of speciation, for instance in plants. Simply put, for a biologist to make a judgement call and call an entity a 'species' is for him or her to propose a hypothesis about the reason for that taxon's uniqueness. There is no simple formula to calculate whether two taxa are different species, simply by counting the number of nucleotide-pairs which are different between the two genome sequences. DNA 'barcodes' are a very attractive idea, partly because of the convenience that the name calls up: one imagines that one can simply scan the DNA like one would scan the barcode a supermarket counter, and in an instant determine the species name.
I am not against the practice of gathering genetical data on the organisms that are being trawled up by these research hauls. They represent a valuable resource for all biologists to make use of: for comparative studies, for tracking down homologous genes, for studying genetical variation in large populations. I am, however, opposed to the misleading concept of DNA 'barcoding' that is often advertised. Personally, I feel that if we only use this DNA data for crunching numbers and generating barcodes, then we are underutilising their potential. There is much biology behind the genetic consequences of speciation and variation that we can learn by putting DNA and morphological data together. For instance, two individuals might be morphologically indistinguishable but hugely divergent in their DNA. This might represent either a cryptic (hidden) species difference, or a single species with a large degree of hidden variation. In the first case, many questions can be asked, for instance how speciation can occur between two populations that look the same: is there a behavioral or physiological basis, is the morphological analysis insufficiently fine, and so on? In the second case, one can ask what is the nature of the sequence difference that we are looking at: different alleles, chromosomal rearrangements, how interbreeding can still result in a cohesive individual genome if the parental sequences are so different. On the other hand, it is also possible for speciation to occur simply by changes in a few genes, barely detectable above the 'noise' of individual variation within a species, for instance if those genes control key aspects of mating behavior, of foraging (because that determines the ecological niche that a species occupies), even of coloration, and (in the case of strongly pleiotropic and developmental genes), the overall form of the organism. In that case one might be justified to ask whether the large morphological differences should be interpreted as difference in species, given that the genetic difference is so small: might it not be possible that they still interbreed? And interbreeding, is in itself another host of questions to be answered. Summing up, all these possible questions, I feel, is more valuable than Procrustean barcoding. I'm certainly not accusing the biologists involved in this study of not thinking of all these things: I'm sure they've got way more ideas and interpretation than I can ever muster, but promising a 'barcode' of life is something that seriously rankles me.
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In other news I have felt the awful feeling of running out of steam. During today's twice-weekly run in camp I started off fairly fast but got overtaken by a few folks and at the end lagged quite far behind. The strangest thing was, when I was trying to run faster to catch up, my legs couldn't respond by increasing their stride or rate of movement even though I wanted them to. I'm not used to that sort of feeling, and I think the food and inactivity during the long break has gotten to me. I had a bad dream some time ago, that might have recurred because it gave me the strongest sense of deja vu, where I was walking, but when I had to run I simply forgot what running was. I couldn't move and tripped over my legs, and I didn't understand why.
I hope it's not a premonition of things to come.
One bugbear I have, though, and it's a really big tardigrade, is how DNA sequencing is being touted as a "quick and easy [way] to identify species". Call me a stick in the mud, but I believe that there is more to species uniqueness than DNA sequence uniqueness. The relationship between the numerical difference in DNA sequence and the taxonomic level of difference (be it individual variation within a population, variation between two divergent populations, the difference between two species, genera, etc.) is incompletely known. The difference between two species might not even show up as a different sequence, specifically where polyploidy is the mode of speciation, for instance in plants. Simply put, for a biologist to make a judgement call and call an entity a 'species' is for him or her to propose a hypothesis about the reason for that taxon's uniqueness. There is no simple formula to calculate whether two taxa are different species, simply by counting the number of nucleotide-pairs which are different between the two genome sequences. DNA 'barcodes' are a very attractive idea, partly because of the convenience that the name calls up: one imagines that one can simply scan the DNA like one would scan the barcode a supermarket counter, and in an instant determine the species name.
I am not against the practice of gathering genetical data on the organisms that are being trawled up by these research hauls. They represent a valuable resource for all biologists to make use of: for comparative studies, for tracking down homologous genes, for studying genetical variation in large populations. I am, however, opposed to the misleading concept of DNA 'barcoding' that is often advertised. Personally, I feel that if we only use this DNA data for crunching numbers and generating barcodes, then we are underutilising their potential. There is much biology behind the genetic consequences of speciation and variation that we can learn by putting DNA and morphological data together. For instance, two individuals might be morphologically indistinguishable but hugely divergent in their DNA. This might represent either a cryptic (hidden) species difference, or a single species with a large degree of hidden variation. In the first case, many questions can be asked, for instance how speciation can occur between two populations that look the same: is there a behavioral or physiological basis, is the morphological analysis insufficiently fine, and so on? In the second case, one can ask what is the nature of the sequence difference that we are looking at: different alleles, chromosomal rearrangements, how interbreeding can still result in a cohesive individual genome if the parental sequences are so different. On the other hand, it is also possible for speciation to occur simply by changes in a few genes, barely detectable above the 'noise' of individual variation within a species, for instance if those genes control key aspects of mating behavior, of foraging (because that determines the ecological niche that a species occupies), even of coloration, and (in the case of strongly pleiotropic and developmental genes), the overall form of the organism. In that case one might be justified to ask whether the large morphological differences should be interpreted as difference in species, given that the genetic difference is so small: might it not be possible that they still interbreed? And interbreeding, is in itself another host of questions to be answered. Summing up, all these possible questions, I feel, is more valuable than Procrustean barcoding. I'm certainly not accusing the biologists involved in this study of not thinking of all these things: I'm sure they've got way more ideas and interpretation than I can ever muster, but promising a 'barcode' of life is something that seriously rankles me.
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In other news I have felt the awful feeling of running out of steam. During today's twice-weekly run in camp I started off fairly fast but got overtaken by a few folks and at the end lagged quite far behind. The strangest thing was, when I was trying to run faster to catch up, my legs couldn't respond by increasing their stride or rate of movement even though I wanted them to. I'm not used to that sort of feeling, and I think the food and inactivity during the long break has gotten to me. I had a bad dream some time ago, that might have recurred because it gave me the strongest sense of deja vu, where I was walking, but when I had to run I simply forgot what running was. I couldn't move and tripped over my legs, and I didn't understand why.
I hope it's not a premonition of things to come.
29 April 2006
Baaaack
I'm back from Taiwan, after two weeks of stuff that I can't write about here but three days of R and R that I certainly will post on because it was so cool and a great change from the usual run of things. I'll write more about it when I get the pictures from my friend Melvin, who brought his camera and took more than 300 photographs around Taipei! He took so many that he had to pop by a photo studio along the way twice to get the pictures on his memory stick burned onto CD so he could continue taking more.
However, home is still the best place to be, despite all the things we usually complain about when we've been around too long. Travelling is a good thing because it makes you realise what you have that you can't get outside, and it's not just the food that I'm talking about. Singaporeans always make a big song and dance about how the one thing they miss about home is the food, but I think that's because it's a national characteristic that we don't talk too much about touchy feely issues -- things that really touch our hearts and make us cry. Things like how being home means being with family and loved ones, how Singapore's so small that seeing relatives is just a fifteen minute cab ride and not a 2 day series of connecting flights, how the traffic actually stops for you at the crossings, how serial murderers strangle kittens and not people. There are so many reasons to love home, regardless of one's political persuasion, but our nation's chronic inarticulateness and need for concrete, material signposts means that we simply end up saying that we miss the food and leave it at that.
Yesterday I had the chance to meet my kindergarten teacher again; my mother works in Simei now, near the kindergarten I used to attend and where she still teaches, so she bumped into her a few times and came to mention that I hadn't seen her in ages. Since I had the day off anyway I said yes and went along with her. It was like being brought to school for the first time all over again. It's been so long that I can hardly remember what she looked like. According to my mother she hasn't changed much at all, so I should go have a look at my old photographs. Seeing all the kids in her class reminded me of my younger days. One thing I recall quite clearly, for some reason, is that I once spelt 'skirt' wrongly for a test. And all the strife in the classroom: fighting over toys, things, and other kiddy stuff. The children in her class seemed quite docile, and they were so cute when they clustered at the door to see who their teacher was talking to. To think I was once their age and size! It feels really odd, somehow, to consider that. Perhaps I would have been the boy lost to himself in the corner staring at his feet while lying on his back. But it was nice to reminisce, though all those years in between meant it was really hard to say anything: too many things to catch up on. Coincidentally, two of my former classmates had come back to see her just a few days ago: they're in university now. I doubt I'd recognise them if I saw them, and perhaps I have seen them around in the street. It would be cool to meet all of them again.
Today I also met my cousin who now lives in the US. She returned to visit her parents and sister with her husband. The last time I saw her I was probably six or seven and my sister was one, so it's another case of plenty of catching up. But it was easier, perhaps, with my other cousin (her sister) as an intermediary of sorts, and the whole familiy talking together.
With all these memories, and people from the past resurfacing, it's hard not to think about where I'd be in the future. It's certainly difficult to tear oneself away from home, and the sheer familiarity of the streets and the way things work, right down to the odd looks people give you when you act different, make it hard to think that I'd ever stray away from home for very long. Certainly the world has to be seen, and I'm raring to go see it, but like a boomerang, and because the world is round as a pear, I'd have to come back one day and probably, certainly will.
However, home is still the best place to be, despite all the things we usually complain about when we've been around too long. Travelling is a good thing because it makes you realise what you have that you can't get outside, and it's not just the food that I'm talking about. Singaporeans always make a big song and dance about how the one thing they miss about home is the food, but I think that's because it's a national characteristic that we don't talk too much about touchy feely issues -- things that really touch our hearts and make us cry. Things like how being home means being with family and loved ones, how Singapore's so small that seeing relatives is just a fifteen minute cab ride and not a 2 day series of connecting flights, how the traffic actually stops for you at the crossings, how serial murderers strangle kittens and not people. There are so many reasons to love home, regardless of one's political persuasion, but our nation's chronic inarticulateness and need for concrete, material signposts means that we simply end up saying that we miss the food and leave it at that.
Yesterday I had the chance to meet my kindergarten teacher again; my mother works in Simei now, near the kindergarten I used to attend and where she still teaches, so she bumped into her a few times and came to mention that I hadn't seen her in ages. Since I had the day off anyway I said yes and went along with her. It was like being brought to school for the first time all over again. It's been so long that I can hardly remember what she looked like. According to my mother she hasn't changed much at all, so I should go have a look at my old photographs. Seeing all the kids in her class reminded me of my younger days. One thing I recall quite clearly, for some reason, is that I once spelt 'skirt' wrongly for a test. And all the strife in the classroom: fighting over toys, things, and other kiddy stuff. The children in her class seemed quite docile, and they were so cute when they clustered at the door to see who their teacher was talking to. To think I was once their age and size! It feels really odd, somehow, to consider that. Perhaps I would have been the boy lost to himself in the corner staring at his feet while lying on his back. But it was nice to reminisce, though all those years in between meant it was really hard to say anything: too many things to catch up on. Coincidentally, two of my former classmates had come back to see her just a few days ago: they're in university now. I doubt I'd recognise them if I saw them, and perhaps I have seen them around in the street. It would be cool to meet all of them again.
Today I also met my cousin who now lives in the US. She returned to visit her parents and sister with her husband. The last time I saw her I was probably six or seven and my sister was one, so it's another case of plenty of catching up. But it was easier, perhaps, with my other cousin (her sister) as an intermediary of sorts, and the whole familiy talking together.
With all these memories, and people from the past resurfacing, it's hard not to think about where I'd be in the future. It's certainly difficult to tear oneself away from home, and the sheer familiarity of the streets and the way things work, right down to the odd looks people give you when you act different, make it hard to think that I'd ever stray away from home for very long. Certainly the world has to be seen, and I'm raring to go see it, but like a boomerang, and because the world is round as a pear, I'd have to come back one day and probably, certainly will.
12 April 2006
Flying Hair Club
According to the BBC, Islamist MPs in Pakistan are protesting the forced early retirement of an air force officer who refused to trim his long beard, saying that he was victimised by secularist forces, and by implication claiming that religious life is under threat. The explanation by the air force, that long beards cause oxygen masks to malfunction, was simply brushed aside amid the furor.
Perhaps they should think a bit more about what that means. It means that if his beard is too long, and he is flying at high altitude, his facial hair might compromise the seal of the mask around his face and cause the oxygen supply to leak. When the mask malfunctions, he will die and the plane will crash. It is ridiculous to claim that 'secularists' are actively persecuting the religious who wish to maintain their beards. On the contrary: they are actively aiding their cause by keeping them grounded so that they will not die. If every long-bearded pilot was allowed to fly then soon there would not be any long-bearded pilots left, and then the aforementioned MPs might cry foul and ask why the air force had no long-bearded pilots -- were they being actively excluded and discriminated against? The answer, in that case, is simply the invisible hand of natural selection acting upon a trait (beards) that is disadvantageous in the aerial environment. The Pakistani air force is merely saving them from themselves.
Perhaps they should think a bit more about what that means. It means that if his beard is too long, and he is flying at high altitude, his facial hair might compromise the seal of the mask around his face and cause the oxygen supply to leak. When the mask malfunctions, he will die and the plane will crash. It is ridiculous to claim that 'secularists' are actively persecuting the religious who wish to maintain their beards. On the contrary: they are actively aiding their cause by keeping them grounded so that they will not die. If every long-bearded pilot was allowed to fly then soon there would not be any long-bearded pilots left, and then the aforementioned MPs might cry foul and ask why the air force had no long-bearded pilots -- were they being actively excluded and discriminated against? The answer, in that case, is simply the invisible hand of natural selection acting upon a trait (beards) that is disadvantageous in the aerial environment. The Pakistani air force is merely saving them from themselves.
Dialect Use
Our favourite Singaporean English-language broadsheet has a front-page article on dialect use in China. The Chinese broadcasting authorities are concerned about the excessive use of dialect on television, and have introduced measures to vet programmes with dialect content. They expect programmes to be in Mandarin, or Putonghua, and frown upon dialect terms and accents seeping in to 'contaminate' the speech in broadcasts.
In this respect, China's broadcasters are moving in the opposite direction from other large broadcasting companies, which are increasingly embracing linguistic diversity. Where one might have heard only the crisp Received Pronunciation or BBC English on the World Service some years ago, one now hears a large range of twangs and tongues of accents Scottish to Jamaican. But where commercial broadcasters might want to diversify the sounds they transmit because of a conscious policy of representation or to increase regional viewership, the government broadcasting authority in China wishes to homongenise the language spoken in public for more complex reasons.
One important reason is political stability. China's size makes it appear monolithic in the eyes of external observers, but it has considerable cultural heterogeneity within its borders. Cultural differences may, in the fears of the central government, translate to sectarianism and provinces wishing to break away from Beijing's control. While it seems quaint when the Mandarins in Beijing object to Shanghainese TV shows, it is a more serious matter when Tibetans start speaking, well, Tibetan. The article quotes a Professor Shao Peiren of Zhejiang University, who says that 'the resurgence of dialects, abetted by broadcasters, is threatening national cohesion.' The use of the Minnan dialect as a badge of identity by the Taiwanese was then raised as an example of how dialects can be dangerous.
Another possibility is simply class and cultural prejudice. Mr Guan Xiang, a Cantonese coach from Guangdong feels that 'the message is that dialects are vulgar, backward, and undesirable.' With Mandarin being the speech of high officials, other dialects have long been seen as provincial and unsophisticated. This attitude has a long tradition, ironically emphasised by the Chinese government's insistence on calling Mandarin Putonghua, to maintain proletarian appearances and confound the impression that Mandarin is the speech of the elite.
So what does this have to do with Singapore's dialect policy? Our government's rationale is that dialect use will interfere with the learning of standard Mandarin Chinese by students in schools, should they speak one thing in school and then speak another at home. A secondary economic argument has been appended to the pedagogical one, that in doing business with China, a close knowledge of standard Putonghua is important, while dialect use would impair that.
Therefore, China's policy on dialects has no bearing on Singapore's, and one cannot be used to justify (by association) the other. China's language and cultural policy is based on interests of national unity, on the political need to maintain the system of centralised power. Dialects, being regional codes and by definition exclusive to outsiders, generate suspicion from those being excluded and are seen as being centrifugal forces. Singapore, on the other hand, wants to strike down dialect use because it has a negative impact on our ability to do business with other Chinese communities.
Personally, though, I feel that dialect use in Singapore should not be so closely regulated: dialect programming is virtually nonexistent on our TV and radio, being limited to a few specialist outlets, in particular cable Rediffusion radio. The danger of dialect overwhelming our ability to speak Mandarin Chinese is overstated: dialect use has been cut back so greatly that now it is primarily the older generation that can speak it. As some young local writers and poets have attested, being inconversant in dialect only widens the generational divide between youth and the elderly, limiting conversations to polite platitudes and a few stock phrases. This, of course, is contradictory to our social policy on the role of the family as the fundamental unit of society. More so than our bricks-and-mortar monuments, the unique assemblage of dialects in Singapore makes it Uniquely Singapore, something to be cherished and preserved, rather than swept under the carpet. Neither can we hope to rejuvenate dialect speaking in Singapore simply by importing teachers from the appropriate provinces in China. Our dialects have been enriched by borrowing from other languages, a direct testament to our multi-racial community. For instance, ba sha for market is not standard Chinese (that being shi chang) but a phonetic rendering of the Malay pasar. One might speak of using the jamban, and children are told to behave otherwise the mata might catch them. Borrowings have gone the other way, too, and both Malays and Chinese believe in the efficacy of doing things kongsi.
So much talk has been, well, talked about Singlish and how it is a badge of Singaporean identity. Here is another instance of something that could have only developed in Singapore, and it would be a national shame if we would let it disappear simply because of faulty philological instinct in considering Mandarin to be 'purer', or because of youth thinking it declasse to speak their dialect.
In this respect, China's broadcasters are moving in the opposite direction from other large broadcasting companies, which are increasingly embracing linguistic diversity. Where one might have heard only the crisp Received Pronunciation or BBC English on the World Service some years ago, one now hears a large range of twangs and tongues of accents Scottish to Jamaican. But where commercial broadcasters might want to diversify the sounds they transmit because of a conscious policy of representation or to increase regional viewership, the government broadcasting authority in China wishes to homongenise the language spoken in public for more complex reasons.
One important reason is political stability. China's size makes it appear monolithic in the eyes of external observers, but it has considerable cultural heterogeneity within its borders. Cultural differences may, in the fears of the central government, translate to sectarianism and provinces wishing to break away from Beijing's control. While it seems quaint when the Mandarins in Beijing object to Shanghainese TV shows, it is a more serious matter when Tibetans start speaking, well, Tibetan. The article quotes a Professor Shao Peiren of Zhejiang University, who says that 'the resurgence of dialects, abetted by broadcasters, is threatening national cohesion.' The use of the Minnan dialect as a badge of identity by the Taiwanese was then raised as an example of how dialects can be dangerous.
Another possibility is simply class and cultural prejudice. Mr Guan Xiang, a Cantonese coach from Guangdong feels that 'the message is that dialects are vulgar, backward, and undesirable.' With Mandarin being the speech of high officials, other dialects have long been seen as provincial and unsophisticated. This attitude has a long tradition, ironically emphasised by the Chinese government's insistence on calling Mandarin Putonghua, to maintain proletarian appearances and confound the impression that Mandarin is the speech of the elite.
So what does this have to do with Singapore's dialect policy? Our government's rationale is that dialect use will interfere with the learning of standard Mandarin Chinese by students in schools, should they speak one thing in school and then speak another at home. A secondary economic argument has been appended to the pedagogical one, that in doing business with China, a close knowledge of standard Putonghua is important, while dialect use would impair that.
Therefore, China's policy on dialects has no bearing on Singapore's, and one cannot be used to justify (by association) the other. China's language and cultural policy is based on interests of national unity, on the political need to maintain the system of centralised power. Dialects, being regional codes and by definition exclusive to outsiders, generate suspicion from those being excluded and are seen as being centrifugal forces. Singapore, on the other hand, wants to strike down dialect use because it has a negative impact on our ability to do business with other Chinese communities.
Personally, though, I feel that dialect use in Singapore should not be so closely regulated: dialect programming is virtually nonexistent on our TV and radio, being limited to a few specialist outlets, in particular cable Rediffusion radio. The danger of dialect overwhelming our ability to speak Mandarin Chinese is overstated: dialect use has been cut back so greatly that now it is primarily the older generation that can speak it. As some young local writers and poets have attested, being inconversant in dialect only widens the generational divide between youth and the elderly, limiting conversations to polite platitudes and a few stock phrases. This, of course, is contradictory to our social policy on the role of the family as the fundamental unit of society. More so than our bricks-and-mortar monuments, the unique assemblage of dialects in Singapore makes it Uniquely Singapore, something to be cherished and preserved, rather than swept under the carpet. Neither can we hope to rejuvenate dialect speaking in Singapore simply by importing teachers from the appropriate provinces in China. Our dialects have been enriched by borrowing from other languages, a direct testament to our multi-racial community. For instance, ba sha for market is not standard Chinese (that being shi chang) but a phonetic rendering of the Malay pasar. One might speak of using the jamban, and children are told to behave otherwise the mata might catch them. Borrowings have gone the other way, too, and both Malays and Chinese believe in the efficacy of doing things kongsi.
So much talk has been, well, talked about Singlish and how it is a badge of Singaporean identity. Here is another instance of something that could have only developed in Singapore, and it would be a national shame if we would let it disappear simply because of faulty philological instinct in considering Mandarin to be 'purer', or because of youth thinking it declasse to speak their dialect.
11 April 2006
Some Random Things
A headline on the BBC news website caught my eye: 'New working life peers unveiled'. What on earth is a 'working' life peer? How different is such a peer from any other person in the House of Lords? One can easily imagine the second clause in the headline that was lost in editing: 'Old, broken life peers quietly discarded'. As it turns out, working peers are those nominated by political parties rather than chosen by an independent commission. The reason for the media's interest is the recent controversy of people who had made substantial secret loans to political parties being nominated for peerage.
Speaking of politics, an opinion article in today's Straits Times by Tom Plate riled me a bit. (No link here because ST online is for subscribers only.) Essentially, he states that multi-party democracy is not necessarily the 'panacea to all ills' (tautology!). He goes on to list examples of where this model of governance has failed or wavered, namely Thailand and the Philippines, both of which have experienced some unrest lately, and an example of a country governed by a 'strongman' which has done very well, viz. Singapore. Plate's contention is that practices of 'good governance' are more important than the form which government takes. He then rounds up his argument by observing that China and Vietnam, both professedly Communist states, have set up public policy schools to train their government officials: a puzzling situation to him, because shouldn't the party already be 'the fount of all wisdom'?
Unfortunately, merely listing examples of the failure of multi-party democracy and counting successes (and only one, at that!) is a misleading way of conducting an argument, as pointed out by Carl Sagan in his essay 'The Fine Art of Baloney Detection'. For each example of 'failed' multi-party democracies one can cite other examples of countries that are doing very well on that model. And in contrast to Singapore, not every one-party state has been fortunate in having a leader with enough savvy to make it an economic success; Zimbabwe comes to mind, if only because the BBC has a running feud with it. Ironically, Plate's second contention, that good governance matters, rehabilitates his faulty 'evidence' for the failure of multi-party democracy. Whether a country succeeds or fails doesn't appear to depend so much on what political system it nominally follows as whether the right people are in power, i.e. whether it enjoys 'good governance'.
However, the writer is quite silent as to what constitutes good governance, other than the general feel-good understanding that it will make everyone pull up their socks and stop being inefficient and corrupt. His observation on Vietnam setting up a public policy school of its own supplies part of the answer which he could not see: good governance requires a diversity of opinion as to what constitutes good public policy. When the party's internal mechanism falls short when it comes to formulating and studying policy, external institutions such as, you guessed it, public policy schools play a role in providing feedback to those who govern. Strongmen are not necessarily always smart and with their 'hearts in the right place', as Plate optimistically hopes they might be. The history of political revolution shows that dull and unkind people with only their own ends in mind can just as easily cajole or force their way into power: political astuteness is a trait that is independent from moral virtue or economic foresight. In theory, multi-party democracy acts as a system of checks and balances, where different parties represent different views and the fight for the people's hearts and minds ensures that only the best or at least the most popular policy gets put into action. But danger lurks wherever power and influence are concerned, where politicking grossly overgrows its original role as a barometer of opinion and becomes an end unto itself. On the other hand, one-party rule or monarchical rule can succeed where there is goodwill between the rulers and the ruled, and where policy is formulated with adequate discussion and debate, both within the party and by actively soliciting the advice of the public and external experts.
To conclude, let us learn from the lessons of two neighbouring kingdoms, the kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, one of which is experiencing rebel uprisings, anti-monarchical sentiment, and martial law, while the other is peaceful despite having closed itself off to the outside world for most of its modern history. In Nepal, King Gyanendra's direct rule, which he justifies by pointing to the failure of the previous government to stop Maoist rebellions and by promising to reinstate democracy at a future date, has resulted in resentment and mass protests as the armed forces are used to control the population. In Bhutan, King Wangchuk's announcements of his abdication and the introduction of democratic reforms were met with appeals for him to stay on. Bhutan's political dissent, while not nonexistent, is not nearly as violent as that in Nepal, and its problems are primarily economic, as it opens up to the realities of modern trade and commerce. One might argue that Bhutan is not necessarily better off than Nepal, because of these problems, but at least with a peaceful home front they can be tackled properly: can useful anything be accomplished over the frenzy of street riots and the sting of tear gas?
Speaking of politics, an opinion article in today's Straits Times by Tom Plate riled me a bit. (No link here because ST online is for subscribers only.) Essentially, he states that multi-party democracy is not necessarily the 'panacea to all ills' (tautology!). He goes on to list examples of where this model of governance has failed or wavered, namely Thailand and the Philippines, both of which have experienced some unrest lately, and an example of a country governed by a 'strongman' which has done very well, viz. Singapore. Plate's contention is that practices of 'good governance' are more important than the form which government takes. He then rounds up his argument by observing that China and Vietnam, both professedly Communist states, have set up public policy schools to train their government officials: a puzzling situation to him, because shouldn't the party already be 'the fount of all wisdom'?
Unfortunately, merely listing examples of the failure of multi-party democracy and counting successes (and only one, at that!) is a misleading way of conducting an argument, as pointed out by Carl Sagan in his essay 'The Fine Art of Baloney Detection'. For each example of 'failed' multi-party democracies one can cite other examples of countries that are doing very well on that model. And in contrast to Singapore, not every one-party state has been fortunate in having a leader with enough savvy to make it an economic success; Zimbabwe comes to mind, if only because the BBC has a running feud with it. Ironically, Plate's second contention, that good governance matters, rehabilitates his faulty 'evidence' for the failure of multi-party democracy. Whether a country succeeds or fails doesn't appear to depend so much on what political system it nominally follows as whether the right people are in power, i.e. whether it enjoys 'good governance'.
However, the writer is quite silent as to what constitutes good governance, other than the general feel-good understanding that it will make everyone pull up their socks and stop being inefficient and corrupt. His observation on Vietnam setting up a public policy school of its own supplies part of the answer which he could not see: good governance requires a diversity of opinion as to what constitutes good public policy. When the party's internal mechanism falls short when it comes to formulating and studying policy, external institutions such as, you guessed it, public policy schools play a role in providing feedback to those who govern. Strongmen are not necessarily always smart and with their 'hearts in the right place', as Plate optimistically hopes they might be. The history of political revolution shows that dull and unkind people with only their own ends in mind can just as easily cajole or force their way into power: political astuteness is a trait that is independent from moral virtue or economic foresight. In theory, multi-party democracy acts as a system of checks and balances, where different parties represent different views and the fight for the people's hearts and minds ensures that only the best or at least the most popular policy gets put into action. But danger lurks wherever power and influence are concerned, where politicking grossly overgrows its original role as a barometer of opinion and becomes an end unto itself. On the other hand, one-party rule or monarchical rule can succeed where there is goodwill between the rulers and the ruled, and where policy is formulated with adequate discussion and debate, both within the party and by actively soliciting the advice of the public and external experts.
To conclude, let us learn from the lessons of two neighbouring kingdoms, the kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, one of which is experiencing rebel uprisings, anti-monarchical sentiment, and martial law, while the other is peaceful despite having closed itself off to the outside world for most of its modern history. In Nepal, King Gyanendra's direct rule, which he justifies by pointing to the failure of the previous government to stop Maoist rebellions and by promising to reinstate democracy at a future date, has resulted in resentment and mass protests as the armed forces are used to control the population. In Bhutan, King Wangchuk's announcements of his abdication and the introduction of democratic reforms were met with appeals for him to stay on. Bhutan's political dissent, while not nonexistent, is not nearly as violent as that in Nepal, and its problems are primarily economic, as it opens up to the realities of modern trade and commerce. One might argue that Bhutan is not necessarily better off than Nepal, because of these problems, but at least with a peaceful home front they can be tackled properly: can useful anything be accomplished over the frenzy of street riots and the sting of tear gas?
Out of Town
Hello folks, I'll be away from Wednesday until the end of the month; going overseas on an exercise. Do behave yourselves until I return!
08 April 2006
An Unphonetic Phonetic Alphabet
The NATO phonetic alphabet (A for Alpha, B for Bravo, C for Charlie) was designed to aid in radio voice transmissions, where interference and poor reception often made sounds indistinct. To overcome this problem, 26 words were chosen to represent the letters of the alphabet, each word being distinct and not easily confused with the others, so that one could spell out one's message using these call-signs. What, then, would an unphonetic phonetic alphabet, designed for maximum confusion, be like? Here's my attempt. Suggestions for improvement are welcome!
Auntie
Bee
Cue /* Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumly)
Dhoti
Enervate
Fish / Ghoti
Gestate
Horology
Innervate
Juan
Ketchup
Llama
Magdalene (pronounced Mawdlin)
Nought
Oocyte
Ptolemy
Quiche
Route
Sea / Syzygy
Tea
Untie
Virgil
Wavertree (pronounced Wawtry)
Xhosa
You
Zymurgy
* indicates alternatives, i.e. I can't decide which would be more confounding.
Auntie
Bee
Cue /* Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumly)
Dhoti
Enervate
Fish / Ghoti
Gestate
Horology
Innervate
Juan
Ketchup
Llama
Magdalene (pronounced Mawdlin)
Nought
Oocyte
Ptolemy
Quiche
Route
Sea / Syzygy
Tea
Untie
Virgil
Wavertree (pronounced Wawtry)
Xhosa
You
Zymurgy
* indicates alternatives, i.e. I can't decide which would be more confounding.
07 April 2006
Real Love
While having my break in the guardhouse rest room during Sunday guard duty, I struck up a conversation with the duty driver, a chubby chap I'd seen around before but never really got to know very well. As we talked I ended up asking him about whether he planned to clock up enough mileage to convert his military driving license to a civilian one, and he said yes he would, because it is very expensive to take lessons and take the driving test outside. He began to talk about how it'd help him find a job, and he talked about the jobs he had before he joined the army. Then I asked him about whether he had any siblings and he said yes, he has two sisters, both younger than him, and he'd worked to put them through school, while the older of the two was now working to help pay for the youngest's education, since he's in the army. His parents aren't together, so the heaviest burden falls on him, as the eldest child. He mused for a while, and half resignedly, half jokingly said he'd probably never get married, because it's too costly and difficult to save up for married life on top of his other duties. He then said, well that's the lot of the oldest child, isn't it? Give up what you want for the younger siblings.
Then it struck me how much he had given up for them, and what a great deal it is to leave school and start working from a young age knowing full well that it's probably unlikely that you'd ever go back to school again, so many doors being closed to you as a result. It's a great deal to have to interrupt your work to enlist in the army and receive lower pay and on top of that spend even less time with family who need you, a much greater deal than the limpid grouses of those of us who've university places or jobs waiting for us outside when we finally finish our term of national service. Our own problems often seem much smaller when compared to those of others. I wonder, too, how much I'd be willing to give up for my own sister, even as I tell her that I love her. Love isn't just a warm fuzzy feeling.
Then it struck me how much he had given up for them, and what a great deal it is to leave school and start working from a young age knowing full well that it's probably unlikely that you'd ever go back to school again, so many doors being closed to you as a result. It's a great deal to have to interrupt your work to enlist in the army and receive lower pay and on top of that spend even less time with family who need you, a much greater deal than the limpid grouses of those of us who've university places or jobs waiting for us outside when we finally finish our term of national service. Our own problems often seem much smaller when compared to those of others. I wonder, too, how much I'd be willing to give up for my own sister, even as I tell her that I love her. Love isn't just a warm fuzzy feeling.
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